By David Robb ——Bio and Archives--February 10, 2024
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It's primary season 2024. Candidates are being chosen for the national election in November. Will there be election fraud and manipulation like there was in 2020 and 2022? Count on it.
Election Series
Elections are too important to be decided by a bunch of ignorant peasants. Great care must be taken to fortify the elections and make sure that the correct people are selected. Illusions must be preserved, though, to keep the populace from getting too restless. The manipulations must be difficult to prove and open to contradictory explanations so that no-one can demonstrate anything conclusively.
Sarcasm aside, anyone who says that our elections are safe, secure, honest, and accurate either hasn't been paying attention these last several years, or is trying to gaslight the people in service to those who wish to retain power by any means. It has taken time, but hundreds of groups working across the country, mostly since 2020, have been discovering and exposing the massive fraud that has been employed to shape our elections and subvert the will of the people.
This article, and others to follow, will describe some of the methods that have been employed to manipulate election results over the last few years. Particularly since the advent of Covid, the proliferation of electronic databases, of changes to election law, and changes to voting methods have created new opportunities for those who would nullify our choices in favor of their own.
Gone are the days of retail fraud where a few people voted the ballots of dead relatives, or voted multiple times. Now we have wholesale fraud, where votes can be manipulated in the tens and even hundreds of thousands at once. Ballots can even be manufactured in quantity and injected into election systems to drown any legitimate votes in a sea of fraud.
While most have suspected that such fraud exists and has been used, actual understanding of how that fraud has been accomplished has been lacking. While not presuming to be comprehensive, it is my intent to describe some known methods and suggest some new ones likely to be used this year. Some will object that I am teaching people how to commit fraud. I would point out that the bad guys already know these things. It is the honest people who need to know how they are being cheated and what to watch for that need this information.
A bit of background is in order first, before I get into description of methods. While much has been made of the use of "machines" that tabulate ballots automatically, and may even tabulate votes that don't exist or that were for other candidates, these systems are only a small part of the fraud ecology of our elections. Electronic voter rolls coupled with vote by mail and uncontrolled ballot drop boxes form the backbone of most modern election fraud.
Just as a note, if everything worked as intended, if everyone were honest and followed the rules, our election systems would work just fine. Our election systems depend on the "honor system" to function. But in order for an honor system to work, there are three fundamental conditions that must be met. First, the social cost for someone discovered cheating must be high. Second, the risk/reward ratio must favor cheating. Last, the likelihood of discovery must be high. If any of those elements are missing, an honor system will not work.
In our elections, there is now very low social cost, and in some cases there are even rewards for cheating. Particularly for organizations, including nation states, there is no significant social cost, and even great rewards for being able to influence an election.
With modern election systems where electronic access is common, and detection is difficult, the risk is negligible, while the rewards for cheating can be immense, even to the point of taking over the government of a country.
Finally, with many of the modern methods, while the results of fraud may be obvious, how and even when it was done may be difficult to determine and prove. In many cases, the evidence that can be collected does not rise to the level necessary for legal action, or is so complex that most courts do not want to take on election fraud cases.
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Thus we see that the honor system on which our elections depend has no support. Rather than deterring fraud, many of our current election systems actually promote and encourage fraud in ways that never existed before.
To understand modern election fraud will require a level of system thinking that is foreign to many. Just as a car has many moving parts that function together to provide transportation, so our election systems have many moving parts that function together to promote fraud.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) laid the foundation for the vast electronic data bases that are our voter rolls in all states across the nation. Replacing the paper based records that had to be manually maintained, it seemed a good idea at the time to create electronic records. These records could be updated and accessed in fractions of a second, could be accessed from anywhere, and could be maintained up to the minute as voters moved, died, registered, voted, changed their names, or otherwise created information that needed to be reflected in the voter records.
The NVRA set forth four conditions under which a voter could be removed from the rolls. These included, death, moving out of the county of registration, request by the voter for removal, and commission of a felony leading to incarceration. A Supreme Court case added an additional condition where a voter can be removed if they have not voted in the prior two general elections. This limited set of conditions has been a true boon to those who wish to influence elections.
In nearly every state the addition of voters to the rolls is a simple matter. Many states have on-line registration, and Federal law provides for registration through the driver license process (motor-voter law). Once a registration is created, it is nearly impossible to remove it. Even if the registration does not relate to a real person, it cannot be removed unless it meets one of the criteria.
We call these fictional registrations "ghost" voters, and they now occupy huge portions of our voter rolls.
In the past, these ghost registrations were of little consequence. When everyone voted in person on Election Day, ghosts did not generally show up at the polls. While they did not die, move, request removal, and were model citizens who did not commit crimes, they also didn't generally vote.
Until now.
With the widespread use of mail-in voting, including universal vote by mail established during Covid, ghosts can now vote, and many do. How they manage will take a bit of explanation, so please bear with me.
First, those who wish to use ghosts to affect the outcome of an election - the ghost herders - must know which registrations are ghostly. There are several ways to locate ghosts in the rolls, but perhaps the easiest is to create them.
With on-line registration systems, fictional voters can be created from anywhere in the world in unlimited quantities. All that is generally needed is a name, a local residential address, a birthdate, and a mailing address. Most systems will ask for a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. However, since there are people who have neither, the systems will accept a registration application without those.
Names and birth dates can be easily made up. Google and online maps can help locate a proper local address. The mailing address will be critical as that is where the registration confirmation will be sent, and where ballots will be sent. The ghost herder will choose an address they control, or where agents can pick up and forward ballots and other items.
Meanwhile, people living at the registration address may have no idea that there might be dozens of ghosts living with them. It is not uncommon to find addresses with ten, twenty, or more voters registered, even though it might only be a small house with a retired couple in residence.
During an election, when ballots are mailed out, there are several states, including California, where they will be sent to the mailing address, and not the registration address. The ghost herders can collect those ballots, fill them out as they wish, and return them for counting.
In most contests, candidates win by relatively small margins, so the insertion of a few thousand or even just a few hundred ghost votes can be enough to change the outcome. The ghost votes are indistinguishable from legitimate ones and will be counted just as though they came from real voters.
This is just one small description of how "dirty" voter rolls play a part in election fraud. This is not theoretical. A recent conviction in California of an individual who won an elective office through such means demonstrated how it works and how effective it can be.
Looking ahead
Future articles will go further into how dirty voter rolls can be used, as well as how ghosts can be found and eliminated. Such things as ballot redirection, ballot replacement, how drop boxes promote fraud, and many other methods of fraud, including some truly scary ones will be presented. Many other elements and their use will be described, as will be ways to discover and counter them.
While the tools of fraud are formidable and the enemies of democracy who would use them are ruthless and widespread, with knowledge and preparation we can overcome them to ensure our elections truly are safe, secure, and honest.
More to follow.
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David Robb is a practicing scientist and CTO of a small firm developing new security technologies for detection of drugs and other contraband. Dave has published extensively in TheBlueStateConservative, and occasionally in American Thinker.