Montana Ballot Audit Shows the Risks of Mail-in Vote Fraud

Newsweek ^ | April 5, 2021 | John R Lott Jr.

[richardb72]

... We constantly hear that there is no evidence of absentee ballot fraud in the 2020 election. But one state—Montana—has been reckoning with new evidence of how well its 2020 mail-in election went. If the results from Missoula County are any indication, it didn't go well.

State representative Brad Tschida conducted an audit of Missoula County votes with the assistance of the county's elections office. He found that 4,592 out of all 72,491 mail-in ballots—6.33 percent of the total—did not have envelopes. That is a real problem. It is against the law to count such ballots, as there would be no way to match up signatures to verify that the vote is from a registered voter, and no postmarked date to determine whether the ballot was cast on time.

These concerns were significant enough that Montana's governor, Greg Gianforte, announced on April 1 that he talked to Montana secretary of state Christi Jacobsen about investigating them. He also mentioned that he "repealed the prior governor's executive order that mandated all mail-in ballots. So we are going to go back to polling places. I think that it is easier to assure integrity when we do that."...

[a fool in paradise]

“The 2020 election results are settled law.” < /sarc >

[hawkaw]

Didn’t Trump won Montana?

[ealgeone]

No standing.

[DAC21]

“Didn’t Trump won Montana?”

Yeah but instead of Trump winning by 16% it should have been by probably by 25% after factoring cheating.

[Spok]

Why is Newsweek pretending to have a problem with voter fraud?

[TChad]

Why is Newsweek pretending to have a problem with voter fraud?

Newsweek occasionally dabbles in journalism.

It pleasantly surprises me that they would publish any article by the great John R. Lott.

[wildcard_redneck]

Montana is essentially 2 distinct regions of politics, the rocky mountain west has always been a hotbed of communism and the eastern plains which are far more patriotic. The area in question with the ballot problems is in western Montana.

The politics of western Montana were heavily influenced by Eastern European immigrants brought to the mines in 1890s 1910s, uber liberal rich who bought ranches in the rocky mountain west in the 1980-1990s, and Californicater home equity bandits buying McMansion cabins.

[pfflier]

Well, Montana is now off the list for the all star game.

[Sir Bangaz Cracka]

Montana better not go creating voter oppression laws to keep blacks from voting, or Coca Cola, Delta and MLB will do something I tell ya. Hmmm, are any blacks in Montana?

[hawkaw]

Thanks for explaining politics in Montana.

I have been through it a few times.

[cartoonistx]

My maternal grandmother’s family emigrated from Italy in the 1890s to work in the copper mines near Butte, Montana. My grandmother was born on the boat over!

[FreeReign]

He found that 4,592 out of all 72,491 mail-in ballots—6.33 percent of the total—did not have envelopes.

There's that 6% number again.

[TakebackGOP]

That’s how Biden was able to win the popular vote.

[doc maverick]

As I recall, the ones without envelopes were the ones shipped in from the CCP after hours.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Missoula County? Far, far, far, far left county in the red state of Montana.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Only three counties in the western part of the state, Deer Lodge (Anaconda), Silver Bow (Butte) & Missoula (Missoula) consistently vote left. Deer Lodge & Silver Bow get it from heavy union leanings and Missoula, well, they get their leftist leanings form Berkely, Kalifornia.

Of course, just my opinion.

[texas booster]

What makes the Montana audit so important is that it is the only one so far that has looked at all the envelopes in a county. That compares to the 100 envelopes examined in Maricopa County, Arizona, and the 10 percent of the envelopes examined in Cobb County, Georgia. When asked about the ballots, Missoula County elections administrator Bradley Seaman had no explanation for the missing envelopes. He now claims those counting didn't have proper training or clear procedures. But counting envelopes isn't difficult. County election officials set up the process for the count and supervised it, and those doing the count did exactly as they were told. Indeed, the only comment made to those counting ballots during the process was that they may have been given the same envelopes twice to count.

I ventured over to Newsweak to look at the article and saw that it is from the Crime Prevention Research Center. Up until January, Lott was the senior adviser for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Policy, and he worked on vote fraud issues.

[texas booster]

A random set of about 15,000 Missoula mail-in ballots were checked for other problems. Fifty-five did not have dates and 53 did not have their signatures checked. That equals a rate of 0.7 percent.

[texas booster]

Election officials are required by law to make video recordings of the initial opening of ballots and recount, but, disturbingly, Missoula County's video is missing. The county now says it counted and scanned in all the envelopes, but the video evidence is lost despite multiple warnings, even before the election, to keep relevant evidence.

And there were other problems. Twenty-eight envelopes from one nursing home allegedly had the same signature. Many dozens of envelopes had identical signatures, but the audit wasn't allowed to determine the precise number of them. Nor did election officials allow pictures of these identical signatures despite multiple requests.

Too important to ignore the details.