Editor’s Note: Activist Post does not endorse any candidate for president or any other political office. This article is presented for informational purposes only and all opinions are the author’s alone.
Safe Harbor, Texas Hold’em And Forensics
Election security is not a partisan issue.
December 8th marked the “Safe Harbor Day Deadline” which is when states typically need to certify election results. However, some constitutional experts say the deadline does not apply to disputed states, and that more time is needed to properly investigate ballot irregularities and voting anomalies.
“The ONLY Electoral College deadline specifically required by the Constitution is noon on January 20, at which point Trump’s first term officially ends,” Phillip Kline of The Amistad Project tweeted Tuesday.
According to a press release from The Amistad Project, “the December 8 ‘safe harbor’ deadline for appointing presidential Electors does not apply to states where flagrant violations of state election laws affected the outcome of the popular vote. In fact, the only Constitutionally-set date in the election process is the assumption of office by the President on January 20.”
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The Amistad Project has filed litigation in several key swing states arguing that illegal conduct by state and local officials led to more than 1.2 million potentially fraudulent ballots, including illegal votes that were counted and legal votes that were not counted. In each state, the number of potentially fraudulent ballots far exceeds the margin separating the leading presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, Michigan is still waiting on the report from a forensic audit of Dominion voting machines in Antrim County mentioned in a previous piece.
Matthew DePerno of DePerno Law Offices, who filed a lawsuit on Friday on behalf of Central Lake resident William Bailey, claims that Dominion Voting Systems “committed material fraud or error in this election so that the outcome of the election was affected.” DePerno was granted permission to conduct a forensic study of the 16 Dominion voting machines, tabulators, thumb drives, related software, and the Clerk’s “master tabulator.”
“My forensic team is still reviewing the information, and we hope to get a report completed tonight,” Matthew DePerno told Activist Post on Wednesday, December 9th. There is currently a protective order that doesn’t permit his team to share the findings — if fruitful of fraud — with the Trump administration or anyone else.
Meanwhile, State Rep. Matt Hall, the Republican who chairs the Michigan House Oversight Committee sent a follow-up letter to Dominion CEO John Poulos asking, yet again, to help answer a few questions to help lawmakers and voters better understand the election software. Hall even said he was amenable to Zoom but that if this letter was also ignored, he was prepared to issue a legislative subpoena to ‘compel’ an appearance.
Read more in The Epoch Times.
Poulos grew Dominion through direct support to elections in Mongolia and the Philippines. He also co-founded The Delian Project, a non-governmental organization that “aims to help post-conflict and emerging democracies implement positive change in their electoral process through the application of technology.” Critics have linked The Delian Project and Democrats. It turns out the Clinton Foundation invested $2.25 million in Dominion Voting.
Interestingly, Poulos testified before the Committee on House Administration in January on the topic of election security perspectives. He mentioned Dominion being a U.S.-owned company, although it’s headquartered in Toronto.
Finally in a twist, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a 92-page lawsuit in the US Supreme Court against Against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan & Wisconsin. A major point of the lawsuit is going to hinge on the fact that local officials in these 4 states changed voting policies, including the expansion of mail-in ballots because of the COVID-19 pandemic, without the permission of state legislatures.
The claim, writes Sarah Westall, challenges the defendant’s administration of the elections claiming the “2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities in the Defendant States.”
Also, check out the breakdown by World Wire News.
Local officials do not have the constitutional authority to change voting procedures regardless of whatever COVID-related emergency power they may have.
President Trump says at least 17 States have joined Texas in the case against Election Fraud.
Power Tripping At The Polls
As mentioned in earlier pieces, the coronavirus was used as an excuse to redefine electoral laws.
“My concerns began prior to the election over the increased effort to solicit voters during the COVID-19 pandemic who may not be legally able to vote,” explains Brenda Savage of the Election Integrity Fund (EIF), a bipartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to assuring that elections are conducted legally.
She witnessed a push to offer mail-in ballots to all residents of voting age compared to the previous method of sending Absentee Ballot requests only to registered voters within municipalities by their Clerks.
Savage became a plaintiff in a suit filed by Thomas More Law Society through The Amistad Project due to the changes put forth by the Oakland County Clerk, reducing the ability of registered voters to participate as Poll Challengers. The lawsuit named Jocelyn Benson as Secretary of State and the Oakland County Government.
We filed prior to the election with an emergency request for hearing due to the fact that we could not get answers to the request for info from the Oakland County Clerk until just before the election. The answer at that time was that only 3 Poll Challengers would be allowed to participate in the Absentee Ballot counting for 16 municipalities which were being counted at a central location.
Intimidation was a theme in Michigan. Aside from alleged ballot fraud, there were also accounts of poll challenge barriers.
Accounts detail that election officials systematically discriminated against Republican poll watchers and in favor of Democratic poll watchers and activists in enforcing rules — in particular, through abuse of “social distancing” requirements. Savage can attest as she fielded dozens of affidavits via EIF.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed by Trump against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Wayne County officials was accompanied by 234 pages of sworn affidavits. Credentialed election challengers were allegedly blocked from having a sufficient view of the vote-counting process and that challenges against certain ballots were ignored. As a result, ineligible ballots were tallied.
Challenger Mary Shinkle, for instance, was told by an election worker that she was not allowed to observe a ballot duplication because “if [democrats] make a mistake then [republicans] would be all over us.”
Meanwhile, Jessy Jacob says she observed City of Detroit election workers and employees coaching and trying to coach voters to vote for Joe Biden and the Democrat party and improperly pre-date the absentee ballot.
“I witnessed these workers and employees encouraging voters to do a straight Democrat ballot,” she said at a Michigan state legislature hearing.
Later, Savage recounted how Jacob sought out her team members for support. “She came to us for protection as we are unbiased.”
Incidentally, a Michigan Secretary of State official told The Epoch Times during the hearing, that “no actual evidence of any wrongdoing or fraud was presented, despite repeated questions requesting such evidence from lawmakers.”
Democrat election officials also reportedly would applaud, cheer, and yell whenever a Republican challenger was ejected from the counting area. The Trump lawsuit also mentioned the backdating of ballots and unverified voters. For instance, Kayleigh Mcenany, a Wayne County election worker, stated in a sworn affidavit that she was instructed to falsify THOUSANDS of absentee ballots in Detroit. Trump’s campaign withdrew their lawsuit on Nov. 19.
Here’s a piece titled How Dead Voters Can Vote in Michigan. Watch this Trump poll watcher from Michigan who says she was discriminated against.
In response to Trump’s lawsuit and allegations of election chicanery, Jake Rollow, Michigan Department of State spokesperson, said:
This is the same kind of irresponsible false rhetoric and misinformation that we saw throughout the election. [The lawsuit] is a press release masquerading as a legal claim designed to promote false claims aimed at eroding the public’s confidence in Michigan elections. But it does not change the truth: Michigan’s elections were conducted fairly, securely, transparently, and the results are an accurate reflection of the will of the people.
To Certify Or Not To Certify
The Michigan certification process was also rife with threats, intimidation, and drama.
On Friday, November 20th, amid the certification hoopla, President Donald Trump summoned Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield to the White House. The mainstream cast rumors on what they would discuss. Later reports they discussed in large part, COVID-19 relief.
On Saturday, November 21st, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Michigan Republican Chair Laura Cox sent a letter to Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers to urge a delay in the certification.
“To simply gloss over these irregularities now without a thorough audit would only foster feelings of distrust among Michigan’s electorate,” the letter reads.
Yet on Monday, November 23rd, 11/23/2020, following an over three-hour virtual meeting broadcast live by Michigan Board of State Canvassers, it was decided, 3-0, to move forward with the certification of the election results, despite allegations that 71% of poll votes seemingly did not match in Wayne County.
After listening to the meeting for about an hour, my takeaway was that Democrats were shaming anyone who opposed certification, describing them as unpatriotic and suggesting that not certifying is a felony, which it’s not.
The Detroit News reported that Republican board member Aaron Van Langevelde crossed over to join the two Democratic board members in supporting certification. A fourth member of the board, Norm Shinkle, a Republican, abstained. You can read Facebook Whistleblower Ryan Hartwig’s notes for more from that meeting.
That same day, an order to enjoin the certification with the Michigan Supreme Court against the City of Detroit and Michigan Democratic party was denied. The two plaintiffs, Cheryl Costantino and Edward McCall, contended that “the results of the November 2020 election [are] certified . . . Plaintiffs will lose their right to audit its results, thereby losing the rights guaranteed under the Michigan Constitution.”
Indeed, the plain language of Const 1963, art 2, § 4(1)(h) does not require an audit to precede the certification of election results. Logically, you may assume that you need to audit before certification, but it seems it’s the opposite. “To the contrary, certified results would seem to be a prerequisite for such an audit…”
“You can think of it this way until it’s certified, it remains theoretical,” explains Trey Trainor, Commissioner, and current Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Initially, Wayne County GOP members deadlocked with a 2-2 vote on the decision to certify election votes, and the two Republicans only agreed to move forward if they received a “comprehensive audit.” In an affidavit, Republicans Monica Palmer and William C. Hartmann said they later learned that state officials would not honor the audit to verify whether voter registration and votes cast balances out. They felt they had no recourse but to oppose certification until more investigation could be performed.
They cited bullying tactics, e.g. being accused of being racist, as the reason for agreeing to finally certify the day prior. The two tried to get the certification rescinded without luck. Michigan officials went on the record to state the Board of Canvassers, who wanted to reverse their decision, were out of luck.
Michigan’s chief election officer said a post-election audit will be performed, though not to check “mythical allegations” of fraud.
“There is no legal mechanism for them to rescind their vote. Their job is done, and the next step in the process is for the Board of State Canvassers to meet and certify,” Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for the Michigan secretary of state, reported to AP News.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson stated that trying to halt the certification process was “nothing more than an attempt to misuse these roles to play partisan politics and cause confusion which, again, is kind of the norm that we’ve seen throughout this election.”
According to The Detroit News, she also stated that now that certification had taken place, they would be implementing a statewide risk-limiting audit and local procedural audits to affirm the integrity of the process and identify opportunities for improvement to strengthen elections “even further in the months ahead.”
Note that there are different types of audits. For instance, routine post-election audits check voting system performance in contests, regardless of how close margins of victory appear. For these process-based audits, it would not appear critical whether they occur before the election results are finally certified, as the audit is intended to gather the information that could be used to perfect voting systems going forward. What have those audits looked like in the past? How will they look this time around?
Good to note: a review of election laws conducted in early 2018 similarly recommended that audits be undertaken “after preliminary outcomes are announced, but before official certification of election results.” Because this allows for “correction of preliminary results if preliminary election outcomes are found to be incorrect.” Purposefully confusing?
Michigan’s audit manual says audits should take place within 30 days of the board certification of results, or by Dec. 23. The Powell lawsuits assert that when it comes to Michigan, the results for the President in the November 3, 2020 election must be set aside.
Arguably, Governor Whitmer, Secretary Benson, and other defendants violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits states from denying any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. In other words, the laws of a state must treat an individual in the same manner as other people in similar conditions and circumstances. A violations of the Michigan Election Code is considered a felony.
“You must know in your heart that this election was fraudulent,” said one Republican poll observer who testified during the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee hearing on December 1st in Lansing. “There’s no question of it, if you really are sensible.”
Read Part 1: The Wolverine State — A Flip-Flopping Fiesta of Fraud?
Read Part 2: Designed For Fraud? Dominating In Antrim County
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