Who could have ever predicted this would be a big ol’ nothingburger?
The Texas secretary of state’s office has released the first batch of results from its review into the 2020 general election, finding few issues despite repeated, unsubstantiated claims by GOP leaders casting doubts on the integrity of the electoral system.
The first phase of the review, released New Year’s Eve, highlighted election data from four counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin — that showed few discrepancies between electronic and hand counts of ballots in a sample of voting precincts. Those partial manual counts made up a significant portion of the results produced by the secretary of state, which largely focused on routine voter roll maintenance and post-election processes that were already in place before the state launched what it has labeled as a “full forensic audit.”
On Friday, Samuel Taylor, a spokesperson with the secretary of state’s office, said the review was needed “to provide clarity on what issues need to be resolved for the next elections.”
But Remi Garza, president of the Texas Association of Election Administrators, said there wasn’t anything in the review’s first set of results that raised any alarms for him.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything too far out of the ordinary with respect to the information that’s provided,” said Garza, who serves as the election administrator in Cameron County. “… I hope nobody draws any strong conclusions one way or the other with respect to the information that’s been provided. I think it’s just very straightforward, very factual and will ultimately play a part in the final conclusions that are drawn once the second phase is completed.”
According to the state’s review of the counties’ partial manual counts, which they are already required to conduct under state law, there were few differences between electronic and manual ballot tallies — and counties were able to justify those inconsistencies.
See here for the previous update. Boy, nothing says “we want people to see this news” like putting out a press release on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend. In each case cited here, there was a literal handful of vote count differences, and the reason each of the tiny discrepancies was already known. And this is in four counties that totaled over four million ballots cast in 2020. It’s hard to imagine a cleaner or clearer result.
The state’s progress report for phase one of its audit also included data related to regular maintenance of the state’s massive list of registered voters — it surpassed 16.9 million in November 2020 — that goes beyond its four-county review. But some of the figures highlighted by the state either appear to be faulty or remain unverified.
For example, the secretary of state’s office noted it had sent counties a list of 11,737 records of registered voters it deemed “possible non-U.S. citizens.” But the Tribune previously reported that scores of citizens, including many who registered to vote at their naturalization ceremonies, were marked for review.
Although it has yet to finish investigating the records, the state also included an unverified figure of 509 voter records — about 0.0045% of the 11.3 million votes cast in November 2020 — in which a voter may have cast a vote in Texas and another state or jurisdiction. The state said the work of reviewing those records to eliminate those that were “erroneously matched” because of data issues wouldn’t be completed until January.
The state also highlighted the investigation of 67 votes — about 0.0006% of the votes cast in the 2020 general election — cast by “potentially deceased voters.” This review also has not been completed.
In its report, the secretary of state emphasized that the removal of ineligible or deceased voters from the voter rolls “in and of itself does not indicate that any illegal votes were cast.”
What they almost always find in the latter case is that the voter died after their vote had been cast. In a state with millions of people, that sort of thing happens. I would expect that in most of the former cases, closer inspection shows that the votes in question were actually cast by different people. Accurate name-matching is a tricky business. As for the “non-citizen voter purges” the state regularly tries and fails to do with any accuracy, well, just keep that in mind whenever the state of Texas or any of its officials make claims about voting irregularities. The motivation to find bad things blinds them to such a degree that any bad things they find are inherently tainted by the nature of their search. Only by removing that motivation, and thus enforcing a careful and deliberate process, can any claims be considered credible.
GOP: Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them.
The fact that there is no evidence is in and of itself evidence of the fraud. The likely route of the theft was to shred up the mailed in ballots for Trump, so of course, you aren’t going to find any evidence.
The other way that the election was a fraud was from the “experts” and media telling us the Big Lie. So, now we are stuck with a badly demented president, who is now saying what Trump said: “there is no federal solution, it’s up the states.” We have working class, middle class, and small business destruction due to rampant inflation, we have crime out of control, we have wildfires in December in January, we have a border crisis…it’s just amazing at how quickly the country has been destroyed, and yet, the media doesn’t attack Biden like they attacked Trump (and still are with the January sixth nonsense), and, on top of all that, the public opinion of the Biden administration is the lowest approval ratings, ever, in spite of no media telling us how bad he is.
Just some facts here.
What will it take to destroy your faith in the System?
JH: “What will it take to destroy your faith in the System?”
me: as long as you keep not voting, things are looking up.
Joel, yeah, I am doing my part by not participating but we need to get more people to abandon the “big two” which is basically a vehicle for the millionaires and billionaires and power hungry who run everything…
Last time I checked the voting age is 18, so it’s not really a big deal that Jason isn’t voting.
Most likely the fact here is that Jason is not voting age based on the outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child.
Jason, It’s the typical mess to clean up after a GOP president leaves office. They have a frat party with the country, then the adults have to come in and look like the bad guys to try and get it in shape for the next cycle….wash, rinse, repeat.
Yeah, of course this happened, of all places Texas, lmao
“The fact that there is no evidence is in and of itself evidence of the fraud. The likely route of the theft was to shred up the mailed in ballots for Trump, so of course, you aren’t going to find any evidence.”
Robert: cleanup is not going very well. You have the Covid cases and deaths greater than under Trump, even though there are vaccines now. You have a president who mocks the American people, and blames them for his failures. There is inflation crushing the working and middle class and small business. There are empty shelves at the store. Hospitals are flooded and flights cancelled all the time. There is a border crisis. Crime at highs not reached in decades.
Now, we see that the “heroes” of 2020 were mostly fraud. The lab leak theory is plausible, the Cuomo brothers had to slink away in shame, Fauci and the CDC have been lying to us….
How is the clean up going? The adults can’t even get along with France. I’m sorry, I don’t see that the adults look like bad guys due to fixing the problems of Trump. Most of the problems with Trump were his lack of concern about the environment and his tax cuts.
The other evidence that the election is rigged is that the Democrats have been desperately trying to make elections federally controlled, and to change election laws that have been around for years. Kind of indicates that they need to do this to make sure they can win….eliminate voter ID? Sure, it’s racist. So the Democrats are saying “we know minorities are too stupid to get an ID, and we can convince them to vote for us.”
To paraphrase, “The fact that there’s no evidence at all is the evidence that it in fact did happen.”
Words to live by, Dr. Hochman, words to live by.
Based on CDC stats, there’s more folks presently passing away from COVID ’cause they’re unvaxxed than there are vaxxed folks dying.
Darwin was right. Sounds like natural selection at play.
Hoch,
You are like a human pretzel contorting yourself in your arguments!
Ever considered Cirque De Soleil?
https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/theatre/the-most-flexible-human-on-earth-feels-no-pain-during-his-performance-in-luzia
JH: You have no personal knowledge of anyone shredding ballots, and you seem to be unaware that anyone doing it would be detected in a New York minute. Almost
NOBODY is going to risk jail time for ANY politician running for office. As for wildfires in December, take a look at a list of North America’s significant wildfires since the 1850s. It’s enough to singe your eyebrows. Your hyperbole about this and other recent calamities is over the top and ignores the general misery that has been the human condition since Day 1.
JH:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/postcard/Don-t-Argue-With-Fools-by-whovina/46208593.V7PMD
Voter_Worker: I don’t think anyone in election administration would shred ballots. I do worry about the integrity of US Postal workers, and whether some rogue employees there might “lose” ballots from selected neighborhoods. Over the years I have often received political mailers AFTER the election from candidates I supported, while those for their opponents never came late. Of course, my suspicions of USPS are heightened because I have had some checks stolen or lost in the mail in recent years, including my property tax payment to Harris County last year, resulting in a penalty (later reversed after an appeal).
Mainstream, I stick to my assertion that it’s going to be a rare bird who would throw their life away for a candidate. I realize that an operation as large as the USPS can have failures. Anecdotally, I have never had any USPS issue such as you described with your tax payment. I’m familiar enough with election administration in Texas to know that there are numerous elaborate procedures and trip wires built into the process that make undetected chicanery unlikely.