Workers prepare mail-in ballots for counting in Lancaster, Pa., on Wednesday.Julio Cortez / AP
Patrick Basham, Spectator: Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling
If only cranks find the tabulations strange, put me down as a crank.
To say out-loud that you find the results of the 2020 presidential election odd is to invite derision. You must be a crank or a conspiracy theorist. Mark me down as a crank, then. I am a pollster and I find this election to be deeply puzzling. I also think that the Trump campaign is still well within its rights to contest the tabulations. Something very strange happened in America’s democracy in the early hours of Wednesday November 4 and the days that followed. It’s reasonable for a lot of Americans to want to find out exactly what.
First, consider some facts. President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking reelection. He got 11 million more votes than in 2016, the third largest rise in support ever for an incumbent. By way of comparison, President Obama was comfortably reelected in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he received in 2008.
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WNU Editor: The above post by Patrick Basham is a must read.
Here is another good take on why the US Presidential election numbers are troubling .... Here Are Some More Troubling Questions About the Election Numbers (Red State)
As to what is bothering me. Here is a small collection of some of my concerns:
1) Nevada's third Congressional District that covers the southern third of the state and much of Clark County. I wonder if these people really exist .... 'Historically strange' spike in incomplete Nevada voter files, casinos as ‘home’ (Washington Examiner)
2) Maricopa county, Arizona has always voted Republican and it voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2016 (plus 44,000 votes). Not this year. Biden won Maricopa county by 45,000 votes. The other counties performed as expected. Maricopa was the only exception.
3) Georgia and missing mail-in ballots and signature matching .... Postal ballots in Georgia: PO boxes, Republican ballots gone astray, and signature matching (NEO).
4) The expulsion of Republican observers from counties that eventually showed a huge swing to Biden .... Reports Of Election Fraud Keep Piling Up In Michigan. What’s Going On? (Federalist).
5) The suspension of the count after midnight in cities like Philadelphia and Atlanta. This is how Russia runs some of its local elections. I know because I have seen it first hand. When a preferred candidate is losing there is a suspension in the count. Observers are told to go home. The count resumes a few hours later and presto the preferred candidate catches up and win. Works all the time.
6) I watched the count tally in Pennsylvania and Georgia using Reuters live coverage of the election (link here). This what caught my eye. On November 5th for every vote Trump got in Pennsylvania, Biden got 12. In Georgia it was one vote for Trump, 8 for Biden.
Some are saying that this discrepancy is because Democrats pushed their supporters to vote by mail and Republicans pushed their supporters to vote on election day, and in the end the mail-in ballots were overwhelmingly for Biden. However the data does not support this position. In most states the mail-in ballots count closely mirrored what people voted on election day. And in the case of New York State. Mail-in ballots actually helped Republican candidates. So why did the five critical and swing states states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia break the trend? And in only certain counties. You tell me.
I know Joe Biden will be made President on January 20. But this debate on his legitimacy is going to hang over him for the rest of his term.
