With Early Voting Comes Early Claims Of Vote Switching
And the real destruction of mail-in ballots
Early voting in this year’s election is underway. In Georgia, at least 2,368,814 people have already voted–almost 33% of that state’s registered voters. Unfortunately, with this process comes a rise in misinformation and lies about voting machines “switching Trump votes to Harris” and poll workers tearing up uncounted ballots.
These claims quickly followed the start of voting, and many are being amplified by Trump Surrogates. Last week, Congressperson Marjory Taylor Greene was one of the first to get things kicked off:
Greene, a staunch Trump loyalist, said during an interview with Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday that “someone” saw their Trump vote change after casting a ballot on a Dominion machine this year in Georgia, where over 1 million people have voted so far.
“They marked Donald Trump and they marked who they were voting for the rest of the way down their ballot on the machine,” Greene said. “When this voter printed their ballot and they looked, it had changed. It was not Donald Trump, it was not me and it was not the other ones they had voted for. It had switched.
“So they had to start over, and they went through it several times and it kept on making the same error,” she continued. “It kept on switching the votes…. It sounds similar to what we heard in 2020.”
Billionaire (and based on his Tweet/Xeet record one of the markiest of marks for right-wing conspiracy theories) Elon Musk also got in on the action while stumping for Trump in Pennsylvania:
While speaking at a town hall in the swing state of Pennsylvania Thursday, tech CEO Elon Musk repeated false conspiracy theories claiming that voting machines rig elections — an assertion that has been repeatedly debunked since it was pushed in the wake of the 2020 election by those seeking to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss.
“I’m a technologist, I know a lot about computers,” Musk told the crowd during the event. “And I’m like, the last thing I would do is trust a computer program, because it’s just too easy to hack.” …
In his comments, Musk named Dominion while linking voting machines to losses for Republicans in Philadelphia and Arizona, saying, “There’s always a sort of question of like, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that the, you know, I think they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not in a lot of other places.”
“Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?” Musk said, while calling for states around the country to “only do paper ballots, hand-counted.”
Aside: Anyone who supports an idea as foolish as “hand-counted” paper ballots while simultaneously stating that all States should have their election results done within hours of polls closing is a fundamentally willfully ignorant person–doubly so if they also complain about the government being too big.
Officials at the state and county levels are already trying to get out in front of these claims–often using Twitter and other platforms to fight these attempts to sew doubt on our election process. The Republican-led Georgia Secretary of State’s office issued this statement in response to Greene’s “just asking questions”:
We are seeing similar posts from other election and county officials–often Republicans–in other states as well:
Occum’s razor suggests that these isolated “switched votes” issues are more likely due to fat finger error than plots to steal the election, but most true believers deny the existence of that test (or Harlon’s razor for that matter).
In addition to “rigged voting machines,” we are also seeing rumors of election workers destroying uncounted ballots. For example, this was posted to Twitter/Xitter about Buck County, Pennsylvannia which borders Philadelphia:
I’m not posting the original video because I don’t want to give this misinformation with a heavily racist subtext (in 2020 most election-stealing lies were directed at counties with a large Black population and directly defaming Black election workers… so, of course, the creators of this propaganda video are using a Black actor) any additional views. In this case, it was the Buck County Republican Party that debunked this claim:
Unfortunately, there has been at least one direct attempt to destroy uncounted ballots–though surprisingly, it happened in Maricopa County, Arizona. Maricopa was also a major focus in the stolen election lies as it voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 and played a crucial role in delivering that state (and ultimately the White House):
Arizona law enforcement officials are conducting an arson investigation after election ballots were damaged when a USPS mail collection box was burned in Maricopa County, a Democratic stronghold.
ABC 15 reported that crews responded to the USPS Osborn Station around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday and found a mail collection box on fire.
“Approximately 20 electoral ballots were damaged, along with additional miscellaneous mail,” Phoenix Fire Department officials revealed, according to ABC 15.
Thankfully, due to improvements in ballot tracking based on useful and pro-democratic local election reforms people who used that collection box will be able to see if their ballot was among the damaged:
“We are waiting for details from law enforcement,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer explained. “We encourage all voters who used that mail box in the last 36 hours to check the status of their ballots at https://BeBallotReady.Vote.”
“Successful delivery is usually reflected on that website within 72 hours,” he added. “Voters should be aware that tomorrow, October 25 is the last day to request a replacement ballot. If a voter believes they were impacted by this incident they can learn more about how to make that request at https://Request.Maricopa.Vote.”
Based on 2020, what we are currently seeing is just the start of these types of incidents: both real and manufactured. If that wasn’t enough to sow doubt, we have state laws around absentee voting (or even worse county laws about hand-counting ballots) guaranteeing that, unless the election is an unexpected blowout in key states, we won’t know the results for days.
All of this sets up the conditions for an incredibly ugly post-election fight. Providing everything is as close as current polling suggests, the Trump camp could (and I predict will) declare victory before the polls even close and then do everything they can to disrupt the counting of mail-in ballots. Perhaps it’s my cynical side taking over, but I suspect that what we are about to go through will make 2020 seem like a cakewalk in comparison.
I continue to be amazed at the bull-puckey Republicans will embrace to win elections without adopting more popular policies.
A story I have probably told before: I was so intent on not voting for Trump in 2016 that I, you guessed it, marked my ballot for Trump. It is the only time I have ever had to request a new ballot when voting.
So, yes, people make mistakes.
I voted a couple of days ago, on a computer screen, that then printed my votes out for me to review before submitting the paper ballot to the counter. I consider this ideal, because the screen is easier to read than a paper ballot and creates a paper receipt that a human (me) can read and an audit can confirm or refute.
@Joe: We have had a similar situation for a couple of years now and it is nice. After our machine prints out the paper ballot, you feed it into the counting machine yourself while the poll worker looks on (and assists, if necessary).
@Joe:
That’s exactly the system I proposed after the 2000 Hanging Chad Kerfuffle in Florida. I do’t see why it hasn’t been universally adopted.
You’re right
https://x.com/catturd2/status/1849848115710525900
Here in Mesa County, Colorado where I live and where former clerk Tina Peters was recently convicted and sent to jail for her illegal tampering with voting machines and lying about it, about 12 or so mail ballots (Colorado mails ballots to all registered voters) have been exposed as fraudulent as they were intercepted before delivery to the voter and signed and returned by the interceptor. The ballots were flagged because the signatures didn’t match and most were signed by the same signer. Also BallotTrax notified the voters their ballots had been received by the county when in fact they had never reached the voter. The fraud detection worked. I’m really hoping the perpetrator will be caught and sent to live with Tina.
Just came back from early voting. My main reason for voting isn’t so much for POTUS and the rest of that crowd, but the 25 pages of judges we are also voting for/ against. The Illinois Bar Association helpfully provides recommendations and no, not all of them are recommended. About 10 the ILBA said no to.
(It’s surprising the number of non-judicial positions that the Republicans aren’t even running a candidate for. Makes me wonder how many similar races are there in red states that the Domocrats aren’t running a candidate for. Can’t win if you don’t even play.)
@Kathy: Because some states went to vote by mail with only paper ballots. Personally, I’d favor vote from your home computer on a “secure” site, but I’m a troublemaker that way–if we’re going to have complaints of election fraud, let’s at least have a system that makes the complaints viable.
@Grumpy realist: If it helps any the election before I moved, in 65% Trump country, most elected officials were running unopposed. Only 3 or 4 out of 8 or 10 had choices.
(I don’t vote, but I do read the voter pamphlet. Go figure.)
@Jake:
First, it’s great to finally have someone who is willing to directly and proudly support Trump.
I wish I could say I was surprised you’d find Catturd a reliable source… but I guess that comes with the territory. Unsurprisingly, his characterization of the Judge’s order is wrong:
Virginia didn’t want to follow Federal Law, fucked around, and found out. Of course, we all know MAGA’s relationship (or lack there of) with the rule of law.
@just nutha:
I’m glad you appended that at the end. Online voting is something that I wouldn’t support.
@just nutha:
Fair enough. But aside from mail ballots, it should be the standard everywhere else.
@Matt Bernius:
“For my friends, anything. For the rest, the law.”
@Grumpy realist: We also had a lot of judges to vote for. They were the majority of the 75 ballot choices we were presented with. The local newspaper weighed in on their recommendation which used Bar Association evaluations. As far as I could tell, their criteria for endorsement did not revolve around ideology but rather competency and the ability to run an efficient court. Works for me.
Now are elected judges a good idea? I could go either way. My one direct experience with the courts was as a juror. We dutifully sat in the hall waiting to be called in. After about 1 1/2 hours, the court administrator showed up and apologized that we were no longer needed. Apparently, things were settled but the judge didn’t bother telling anyone. Also apparently, she was notorious for running a sloppy court. BTW, she was running unopposed.
@Scott: I go ahead and vote because I know that most people probably don’t check the Bar Association recommendations and just go ahead and tick “YES”. It is surprising however the number of crappy judges we DO manage to get rid of. I guess a lot of people just leave those pages blank and don’t vote on the issue.
(And three cheers for smartphones, so I can check while voting. I used to write all the recommendations down on paper and it took FOREVER)
Oh, and reading the reasons why the Illinois Bar Association doesn’t recommend a judge to be retained is often pretty hilarious.
@Jake:
What a perfect example of how to peddle BS to outrage your team without regard for the truth.
HEADLINE: BIDEN JUDGE SAYS ILLEGALS CAN VOTE, RETURNS THEM TO VOTER ROLLS
THE RESPONSE: Well, actually, in many jurisdictions there has been an ongoing, years-long effort to remove potential voters from the rolls at a time that is so close to the election that the normal steps a voter would take to get reinstated can’t be completed before election day. Intentionally or not (lol—of course it’s intentional) these purges of the election rolls frequently are overbroad and include people who legally are entitled to vote, and somehow seem to target demographic profiles that tend to vote for the party other than the party doing the purging. To help prevent this, Congress passed a law requiring that these kinds of non-particularized systematic purges can’t take place within 90 days of an election. Purge all you want more than 90 days before the election when citizens who “accidentally” get swept up in the removal current have time to get reinstated, but not during that 90-day period.
Virginia’s governor issued an executive order to do what federal law explicitly prohibits. Part of the problem with Virginia’s program was that it involved the automatic removal of anyone who had checked the box for non-citizen on a DMV form with no way to prevent removal by showing, for example, that the box had been checked in error or that the box was correct when it was checked 20 years earlier but was no longer correct because the box-checker had, in those 20 years, become a naturalized citizen. A lawsuit was filed to stop enforcement of the illegal order, and as part of that lawsuit evidence was presented showing that this is not just a technical no-harm-no-foul piece of nitpicking—such programs have been shown to remove eligible voters in the past and appear to have removed eligible voters in Virginia in this instance. The federal judge considered that evidence and ruled that the blanket removal could not stand, but did not prevent removal based on particularized showings. The court also included a provision in its order that letters to the people who had been removed from voter rolls by the illegal process must include a statement that if they are not U.S. citizens they remain ineligible to cast a ballot. Virginia now has the opportunity to appeal that order and convince the court of appeals that the trial court was wrong.
The initial claim is pithy, easy to understand, and outrageous if true. The response is complex and boring—my eyes glazed over when I read it, and I wrote it—and relies for its sense of justice on the assumption that we should extend Blackstone’s claim that it’s better for 10 guilty to escape punishment than 1 innocent suffer to voting rights, an assumption that many do not share. (Hell, my experience is that most people today don’t even believe it about criminal law).
I don’t know how we fix the problem that blatant bullshit works and is virtually unrebuttable in a form that people will actually take the time to follow. I fear that the answer is we can’t.
@Grumpy realist: We have to print out and fill in the sample ballot ahead of time because phones have to be turned off in the voting room.
@Matt Bernius: We do online banking, online passport renewals, online TSA Precheck renewals, online driver’s license renewals, and online Social Security account management.
I think we could figure out the technology part of how to do online voting. But I also don’t support it because of the BIG issue — the anonymity of the ballot. It would be much harder for women, in particular, to vote their conscience when their (largely male) partners were looking over their shoulder.
It’s the same reason I don’t support letting the legislature meet “virtually” – it’s too hard to know if somebody is being threatened or manipulated.
@Tony W:
A friend of mine in North Carolina was voting in 2016 and saw several men accompany their partners to their voting stations–as in, she watched as the men stood right next to these women and watched them vote. She went to one of the election workers and reported it and was basically told to mind her own business.
So, yeah, whether voting absentee/mail in, or in a sexist jurisdiction, voter intimidation apparently begins at home.
@Matt Bernius: I don’t either. I can see that I’ma need to upgrade my snark for the audience. Online was a transparently stupid idea even before 75% or whatever of people who have SSNs–so basically every adult in the US–had been hacked related to SSN security.
@Kathy: I’ll leave it at I’m just not a big fan of one-size-fits-all solutions except to remind you of Kathy’s First Law: Every time some one builds the perfect mousetrap, someone discovers a better mouse.
@Roger: The answer IS that we can’t fix stupid. We had the chance to have literacy and other factors to sort qualification to vote but we wasted in on keeping nKKKLAANNNGGGGGs from voting in the glory days of Jim Crow.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think you mean “there are downsides to everything.” After all, what if your mousetrap catches rats instead? Or voles?
It doesn’t have to be the exact same system everywhere. But one that clearly allows one to make choices, check them, revise them, and leaves a paper trail for wither counting or crosschecking, and more important for latter audits or recounts, seems like a complete no-brainer to me.
And yes, there are downsides to this. But there are fewer or more easily addressed than other means, like the infamous hanging chads (at that, punch cards in 2000 already seemed well and truly dated), or electronic machines that don’t print a ballot.
Mr Musk, “There’s always a sort of question of like, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that the, you know, I think they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not in a lot of other places.”
Can Dominion sue Elon now? Would he care if he lost? A Fox News sized settlement, $787 million, is practically couch change to him.
@Scott O:
They probably should, if only to preserve their right to sue again in the future. If they let enough such crap go without comment, it could affect their chances in future lawsuits.