Kamala Harris really
won, but now democracy loses.
Nov 08,
2024
Don’t give me that look. I get how it sounds.
Of course I don’t want
to be one of them. You know who I mean: 2020’s election deniers.
Those belligerent, incessant, red-hat-wearing conspiracy wackos who have only now stopped screaming about their
“rigged election.” After subjecting America to four long years of
eyeroll-triggering drivel, they’ve effectively rendered the topic of election
security entirely unpalatable for polite society.
And that’s exactly what
they’re counting on. It’s why they pushed the “stolen election” narrative so
hard, for so long. It’s brilliant, really. The same message that whipped up
unrest on January 6, 2021, now guarantees what I write below will fall upon
deaf ears.
But it’s also why I
can’t let this go, because so few may pursue it. If we all fall silent, that
means we’re letting Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, and their
anti-democratic ilk get away with it.
Please approach the
following with an open mind. This is the terrible truth behind the greatest
criminal conspiracy in the history of the world.
The 2024 presidential election was stolen.
No, really. Here’s nine ways you can tell:
1. Record turnout, but fewer votes
The big news story on
Election Day was about states—especially swing states—experiencing record voter
turnout. The electorate was energized and engaged, with voting precincts and
polling places reporting crowds even higher than 2020’s never-before-seen figures.
“Michiganders are already voting in record numbers,”
said Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s Secretary of State, that morning. “It’s a great
thing for voters and for democracy.”
Georgia’s record early voting brought in more than
half of 2020’s total turnout. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
confirmed that the state broke its overall voter record despite bomb
threats temporarily closing polling stations. CBS News reported high turnout in Pennsylvania as
well. Election workers at polling stations in Minnesota saw some of the higher turnouts they had ever seen on the
job. Central Wisconsin had unprecedented numbers of voters and long lines,
surprising even those who predicted record turnout.
There was no doubt that
Americans flocked to the polls like never before. Voters were especially driven
to vote for Kamala Harris, whose historic candidacy had led to 2008 Barack
Obama-like enthusiasm. In fact, a recently released Gallup poll found Harris
had a 72 percent favorability rating among Democrats. According to Newsweek, that’s “likely the highest
for a Democratic candidate going back almost 70 years, and ties Harris with
Obama just before he was elected president for the first time.”
And yet Harris
earned only 69 million votes, a full 12 million fewer
votes than Biden’s 81 million four years prior. Donald Trump’s vote total
trailed about a million behind his numbers from 2020 as well.
How could the 2024
election, with widespread record-breaking voter turnout, result in overall
fewer votes being cast than the 2020 election? The difference isn’t small; it’s
around 13 million votes.
Either all those poll
workers and election officials who told reporters about unprecedented turnout
were very, very wrong, or we’re missing 13 million ballots. That’s more than
enough to swing an election, many times over.
2. What about just Philadelphia?
Okay, you’re saying,
couldn’t the record high turnout just be isolated to some areas? If other
places had low turnout that could lead to lower vote totals! Mystery solved!
Yes, smarty pants,
that’s possible. But it’s not what happened. Let’s look at one specific city:
Philadelphia. Turnout in the City of Brotherly Love is critical for any
Democratic candidate that wants to win the key battleground state of
Pennsylvania. And whoever wins Pennsylvania usually wins the presidency. So we
can use it as a microcosm for the whole enchilada.
The Philadelphia
Inquirer reported long lines around the Philly
region—in both the city and surrounding suburbs—throughout the day, and even as
polls closed.
Philadelphia Mayor
Cherelle Parker said she was “super excited” about turnout she was seeing in the city.
“You’ve got to feel it. It’s palpable energy,” Parker said, “Can’t create it.
It comes from the ground up.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh
Shapiro agreed with Parker, saying, “And what we’re seeing is just sort of
anecdotal right now, but kind of extra high turnout in the early part of the
day, particularly here in Philly. So I feel really good.”
And yet, despite stories
of long lines and extended wait times, we’re being told that significantly
fewer Philadelphia voters participated in this election. As of Wednesday
morning, only 676,016 votes had been counted—about 60% of registered
voters—significantly less than the 749,317 that voted in 2020.
In an interview with NBC10, Omar Sabir, chair of
the Philadelphia City Commissioners, said he was annoyed that more potential
voters hadn't returned their mail-in ballots as of about 11 a.m. on Wednesday.
“I think it's a real big
crisis,” Sabir said. “We're talking about 20,000, 30,000 votes. I mean, that
can sway an election."
And sway an election it
did. Now, it’s funny he specifically mentioned mail ballots, because…
3. Uncounted or missing mail ballots
There are dozens upon dozens of people online reporting they mailed, deposited, or
surrendered mail ballots in swing states, but their vote was never counted.
There are too many to link all of them and they’re all unverified, but the
despair and frustration from these disenfranchised voters is overwhelming.
Yes, it’s anecdotal. I
don’t have the power to order a forensic audit of all mail votes, after all.
But it may be just the tip of a 13 million vote iceberg.
Some seem to have been
“lost” in the mail. There have been scattered reports of USPS postal workers throwing ballots away or even stealing ballots and forging votes.
Others were turned in
and then vanished into thin air, with no record of them having been received.
Some voters say that their ballots were “challenged,” meaning someone else
contacted the state and reported it as an illegal vote.
Officials in 14
Pennsylvania counties reported receiving more than 4,000 last-minute challenges by
last Friday, which was the deadline for contesting an absentee voter’s
eligibility. Matt Heckel, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of
State, said that the state had experienced two separate coordinated efforts to
file “bad-faith mass challenges” to question legitimate absentee ballot
applications.
“We’re already
crushingly busy, and that doesn’t count people who are trying to break democracy,”
says Mark Higgins, Democratic chair of the board of commissioners for Centre
County, Pennsylvania. “This is not normal.”
More ballots than ever
have been rejected by states because the voter’s signature supposedly doesn’t
match their signature on file. This includes over 14,000 ballots in Nevada alone, where
the numbers are released publicly.
Most states don’t offer
voters an opportunity to correct—or “cure”—absentee ballots after submission.
In those that do, there’s a time limit for voters to action before their vote
is permanently rejected. If a voter missed the phone call informing them that
their vote needs to be cured, they’re out of luck
If performed
selectively, these underhanded efforts could drastically skew the election.
Imagine the impact if hundreds of thousands of ballots are removed from the
tally if mailed from liberal areas, by women, or with names that hint at a
voter being from a minority group.
4. Trends, demographics and surveys
There was a massive
effort by the Harris/Walz campaign to convince Republican voters, especially women, to put the country above their
loyalty to their political party. Harris received endorsements from scores of
Republicans, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Rep. Liz
Cheney, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, and more than 200 who worked
for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Sen. Mitt Romney,
and the late Sen. John McCain.
By all accounts, the
“Republicans for Harris” effort was successful. Newsweek reported
in October that Republican support for Harris was rising, with nine percent of Republicans planning to vote
for her. Only three percent of Democrats were likely to vote for Trump.
For Harris to have
received 12 million fewer votes than Biden, it would require millions of
Democrats to defect to Trump or stay home. And the latter seems particularly
unlikely when 76 percent of Americans say 2024 was the most important election
of their lifetime.
In CNN exit
polls, Pennsylvanians said democracy was the most important issue for
them in this election. Ahead of Election Day, analysts were uncertain if the
Harris/Walz campaign’s focus on “defending democracy” would land with voters.
But it was clearly important to many. Surely, then, they wouldn’t be voting for
Trump.
Those aren’t the only
inconsistencies. There are many demographics we can dive into, but for the sake
of brevity let’s discuss just the big one: women.
Inexplicably, Harris
was unable to improve upon Biden’s support among women.
This is despite the fact that she would have been the first female president of
the United States. It’s despite that she championed abortion rights in her campaign
messaging and this was the first presidential election after the historic
repeal of Roe v. Wade. It’s despite polls finding that, not only
did women prefer Harris to Trump by 15 percentage points, but the majority of women had come to trust Harris over Trump when
it came to bringing down inflation.
But rather than millions
of women voters flocking from Trump to Harris, we instead saw Trump make slight gains with women.
I know that’s not true.
It just doesn’t add up.
For the vote totals to make sense, huge numbers of Democrats would have to have
flipped to Trump. It defies logic.
5. So many split tickets
However, ballot measures
seeking to restore abortion access won in seven states across the country: not only
the blue states of Colorado, New York, Maryland, but also in the swing states
of Arizona and Nevada, and in deep-red Missouri and Montana.
It seems odd that
Arizona and Nevada, especially, would support both abortion access and Trump,
the presidential candidate who took credit for ending it nationally (Trump
famously boasted, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade” in May).
In addition to the
abortion access win in Arizona, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego also leads in his
battle against Republican Kari Lake. Nevada, too, saw Democratic Sen. Jacky
Rosen win reelection when her state voted for a second Trump term.
But those weren’t the
only split tickets—when candidates from opposing parties win different offices
in the same election—this year.
This trend also included
Wisconsin, where Trump won but Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin succeeded in her
reelection over Republican challenger Eric Hovde. Trump also won Michigan, but
Sen. Elissa Slotkin retained her blue seat there in a high-profile election.
North Carolina was the
first key battleground state to be called for Trump on Tuesday night. However,
even before the presidential race was decided in the state, Democrat
Governor-elect Josh Stein secured victory over over Republican Mark
Robinson—who had Trump's endorsement—with a nearly 15-point margin. Democratic
freshman Rep. Don Davis also kept his seat, despite an uphill battle after his
district was gerrymandered by the Republican-controlled state legislature.
While America is more hyper-partisan and polarized than ever,
an incredible number of swing states have Trump winning the presidency but
Democrats winning other down-ballot races. In 2020, voters in only three states split their vote, in
Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Would Americans in swing
states really vote blue up and down the ballot, but then break for Trump? A historically unpopular candidate? In an
election when the fate of the country is on the line? It seems beyond
impossible.
Unless, of course,
something was interfering with the presidential vote…
6. Odd technical glitches
Numerous polling places
saw crashes and errors with their voting machines and tabulators (counting
machines) throughout Election Day.
This isn’t particularly
strange in an election; they’re inevitable with any complex system that’s only
used intermittently every couple years. But that doesn’t mean we should close
our eyes to those glitches if they hint to wider, systemic problems.
Officials cite human error as the reason why the
“doors” of tabulator machines were not locked prior to the vote being tabulated
in Milwaukee.
Election workers
discovered a “software malfunction” in Cambria County,
Pennsylvania that prevented voters from scanning their ballots. Software
malfunctions also caused issues in the Democratic stronghold of Centre County,
Pennsylvania.
“Centre County’s
election team and IT team have identified that the data are successfully being
exported from the mail-in ballot scanners, but that the data is not being
recognized when uploaded to the elections software,” said county officials in a statement.
The county, which is
home to the sprawling Penn State campus and students, has reliably voted for
the Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections.
At 12:30 a.m. Wednesday,
when the error was reported publicly, the county was reporting that Trump was
thus far winning. The error was eventually fixed with the help of the ballot
scanner vendor. It was only after county election officials rescanned 13,401 mail-in ballots that were
unscannable due to the software malfunction that Harris finally ended up winning the county, as
expected.
That flip-flop seems
super suspicious. Could these “software errors” be rejecting Democrats’ ballots
in other counties, too? Surely that couldn’t be, unless…
Edit: Election
security expert Stephen Spoonamore concurs that vote tabulator machines were
hacked, causing machines to undervote Harris. The election was stolen. Click
here to read more:
Security Expert Agrees Vote Tabulators Hacked
·
Nov 8
7. The GOP accessed voting machine software
Trump supporters or
representatives from the Trump campaign have repeatedly gained access to voting
machine software since 2020.
Regarded by the federal
government as "critical infrastructure" essential to national
security, these machines and their software are typically kept under tight
security.
However, Trump
supporters launched a brazen plot to unlawfully access and obtain copies of
Georgia’s voting system software in Coffee County, Georgia. In
fact, a Washington Post examination found that, “in at least
seven other counties in four states, including Coffee, local officials acting
without a court order or subpoena allegedly gave outsiders access to the
machines or their data.”
Trump supporters used
false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election as a pretext to illegally gain
access to the machines.
Slate reports that “Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger did exactly nothing to investigate the Coffee software heist, or
the other reported attempts, even though there was ample evidence that
something improper had gone on.”
In Mesa County,
Colorado, an outsider was smuggled into the elections office using
a false identity to copy data. Meanwhile, in Michigan, a pro-Trump state lawmaker allegedly
convinced clerks in two counties to release voting tabulators and hard drives for
a House investigation that, according to the House speaker's office, had no
basis or legitimacy. The Trump supporters allegedly took the tabulators to
hotel rooms to break into and examine them.
Also in Michigan, a MAGA
“constitutional sheriff” tried to seize voting machines in 2020.
Trump supporters also
used legal (but still shady) means to access election equipment. In Antrim
County, Michigan, a state judge authorized a search of voting machines and
equipment to be searched for signs of fraud or irregularities. The
Republican-controlled Arizona Senate exercised its subpoena power to grant
outside consultants access to examine machines used in Maricopa County,
Arizona.
The Trump team had many
chances to access the machines. They made illegal copies of the software, which
was never recovered. Experts warned that the data from these breaches could
allow hackers to simulate voting machines and search for vulnerabilities. This
secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment was broad,
well-organized and more successful than publicly recognized, according to
reporting from The Washington Post.
In December 2023, nearly
two dozen computer scientists and election security experts sounded the alarm about this Trump-aligned effort to access
voting system software, saying the software breaches have “urgent implications
for the 2024 election and beyond.”
In a letter sent to U.S.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, special counsel Jack Smith, FBI Director
Christopher Wray and Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency, they asked for a federal probe and a risk assessment of
voting machines used throughout the country.
“The multistate effort
to unlawfully obtain copies of voting system software poses serious threats to
election security and national security and constitutes a potential criminal
conspiracy of enormous consequences,” wrote the group.
There’s no record of
election security advocates having received a response, or the U.S. government
taking new steps to safeguard the election.
Despite that, and in
part due to the Trump camp’s baseless allegations of voter fraud in 2020, the
federal government continues to insist that our nation’s elections are free
from any cybersecurity risk.
''As we have said
repeatedly, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the
election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and
fair elections for the American people,'' said Jen Easterly—Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency Director and a recipient of the above letter—in a November 6 statement.
Are you sure about that,
Jen?
Computer scientist and
election security expert J. Alex Halderman calls statements like that one
“exaggerated.”
“To an expert, that’s
meaningless at best, and it’s stretching the truth at worst,” Halderman told a reporter in October about a
similar statement from Easterly.
Easterly says election
security is foolproof because, across the country, 97% of voters will cast
ballots in jurisdictions that provide verifiable paper backups.
But that won’t help if mail ballots were discarded rather than collected. Nor
will it make a difference if no recount is ever ordered.
The one other thing that
makes election equipment hard to tamper with is that, even if you knew how to
hack a voting machine, you would need to gain covert access to one during the
election. It would be difficult to arrange, unless…
8. Russian bomb threats caused polling station evacuations
Voting was disrupted by
dozens of “non-credible” bomb threats on Election Day. U.S. officials linked
these hoax bomb threats to Russian email domains.
The threats targeted at least 50 different polling places in
key swing states, including Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and
Pennsylvania. While no bombs were found, they briefly affected voting as
polling sites were evacuated and searched.
Fulton County,
Georgia received 32 bomb threats delivered via both
phone call and email, according to Fulton County Police Chief W. Wade Yates.
Four bomb threats were emailed to polling sites in Navajo Country within
Arizona. Threats to polling sites and election offices were reported across about
a dozen Pennsylvania counties, including threats called in to 911 targeting
about 10 locations in Philadelphia.
These evacuations would
be the perfect distraction if a bad actor wished to infiltrate and access
ballots and voting equipment.
Okay, so they had the
means and the opportunity. But how can we know a crime took place at all?
Edit: Election
security expert Stephen Spoonamore believes the bomb threats weren’t used to
allow hackers to gain access, but instead to break the chain of command for
ballots to create an argument for why recounts can’t be done. More details
here:
Security Expert Agrees Vote Tabulators Hacked
·
Nov 8
9. Because Trump bragged about it
Former President Donald
Trump is about as subtle as a rubber chicken. He can’t help but to brag, even
in the most inappropriate of situations.
His supporters say they
like him because he “tells it like it is.” And once in a while, that glimpse
into Trump’s thoughts can be particularly revealing.
In July, Trump appeared on Fox & Friends and said this: “My instruction: we don’t need the
votes. I have so many votes.”
There’s only one
objective in an election—to get as many votes as possible. What politician
tells his supporters not to vote for him?
Only one that doesn’t
need votes to win.
And it wasn’t the first
time. In June, Trump told a rally in Detroit, “Listen, we don’t
need votes. We got more votes than anybody’s ever had.”
How could he possibly
know that five months before the election?
“I tell my people, I
don’t need any votes,” Trump said again at the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference in
June. “We don’t need the votes.”
Trump has actually been
repeating this line since last fall, during his party's primary race. “You
don’t have to vote,” Trump told one New Hampshire audience in October 2023.
“Don’t worry about voting. The voting—we got plenty of votes.”
This started when his
supporters had already been able to spend years with the voting machine
software, and after right-wing activists had begun recruiting Trump-supporting
election deniers as poll workers in swing states.
What’s perhaps most
alarming is that Trump said this to a crowd of Christian supporters in July:
"In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good,
you're not gonna have to vote."
That’s a damning
admission.
In the last days before
the vote, at a rally in Macon, Georgia, Trump
gave his supporters a hint of what was to come: “What’s gonna
happen on Tuesday: we’re way ahead. I’m not supposed to say that, my people
say, ‘Please don’t say that, sir!’”
There’s only one reason
why Trump would be blabbing about these things: because he was so excited that
he and his MAGA cohorts had a plan to rig the election.
That’s why he canceled
so many appearances and rallies. It’s why he hasn’t bothered to temper his
divisive racist and fascist rhetoric. He’s put his ugliest authoritarian
tendencies on display. He’s insulted pretty much every non-white person who
might consider voting for him.
Why? Because he already
knew it didn’t matter.
He got his loudest in
bragging about the scheme during his controversial Nazi-throwback rally at
Madison Square Garden, just before Halloween. Being blatant about not actually
needing votes to be reinstalled as president, he referenced a “secret plan” he
shared with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Here’s what Trump said:
“I think, with our little secret, we are gonna do really well with the House.
Our little secret is having a big impact; he and I have a little secret, we
will tell you what it is when the race is over.”
When pressured, Speaker
Johnson issued a statement that essentially confirmed the existence of the plot:
“By definition, a secret is not to be shared—and I don’t intend to share this
one.”
Well, I guess we’ve
figured it out now.
Bonus: The failed “gut check”
On Election Day, it was
clear Vice President Kamala Harris would be elected. As the day stretched into
night and the vote was tallied, it felt wrong, didn’t it?
Harris had all the
momentum. She had out-fundraised Trump. She was filling major arenas, while he
had to lie about his crowd sizes. She had all the major endorsements. The
fervor was there, at a fever pitch. The major polling aggregates all swung to
push her ahead, reflecting the historic burst of energy behind her campaign.
Women all across the
country were furious about the repeal of Roe, and were prepared to
make their opinion known via the ballot box. Trump’s mask had been long
removed, and he’d revealed himself as a disgusting, Nazi-dog-whistling
autocrat-in-waiting. His promises to become a dictator “on day one” went over
like a fart in church, receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle. That’s
not a winning message when contrasted with Harris’ “Freedom!”
While insiders in
Trump’s campaign reported chaos, despair, and recriminations, Harris’ campaign
team was relaxed, cool, and confident. Everybody in the know was preparing to
say hello to our first “Madame President.”
That morning, Democratic
matriarch Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who—by the way—is never wrong
when counting votes, was asked what she results she expected.
She said, “And what I
have seen […] across the country is a mobilization like we have never seen
before in every state. Not just the targeted states, but in every state, which
leads me to believe that we will win the House. I think that we can win the White
House as well. I'm so proud of Kamala Harris.”
It’s unthinkable Pelosi,
who is known for her almost-supernatural sense of the political tides, would be
that wrong.
States saw record new
voter registrations, record early voting turnout, and record Election Day
turnout. The electorate showed up for Harris. Record voter turnout historically
favors the Democratic candidate.
But when the dust
settled, it was wrong. It’s still wrong. And it doesn’t pass the gut check.
It’s clear that
something major happened.
Donald Trump didn’t just
steal the election, he stole America’s future.
And it will stay that
way unless we do something about it.
