False Equivalency for the Loss
By: Doug Ecks
Tags: Politico, Voter Fraud, Election Integrity, Electoral Fraud, 2020 Presidential Race

Photo by Gustavo Torres on Unsplash

This article is a reaction to an article by Joanna Weiss in Politico from Dec 19th that equates (falsely as I will show) the reaction by Dems to the 2004 election and the Trump campaign’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020.

She says “What happens when a splinter group breaks off from the fundamental American consensus that we can trust an election? The aftermath of the Bush-Kerry race offers one potential answer.” and that is the theme of her article. Which to be fair, does go through some of the merits of the claims against the 2004 election, but equates them with the claims of the Trump campaign, and her focus is not on the claims themselves but what happens when a segment of the population doesn’t accept the outcome of an election as valid.

“I know crimes, I can smell them. You don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you, 18 different ways. I can prove to you that he won, Pennsylvania, by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan, probably 50,000 votes”

Why aren’t these two sides equivalent? Well for example, Rudy Giulani claimed “I know crimes, I can smell them. You don’t have to smell this one, I can prove it to you, 18 different ways. I can prove to you that he won, Pennsylvania, by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan, probably 50,000 votes” per NBC news Nov 19 2020 This is an incredibly strong and specific claim, made by the President’s personal lawyer, and echoed by the White House cabinet and press secretary with zero evidence presented to support it, as court after court cited.

The claims made by, as the article cites, Jonathon Simon and Steven Freeman were independent researchers not affiliated with the 2004 Kerry campaign. And they made data driven claims, cautiously phrased. In full disclosure I interviewed Jonathon Simon for an article a few days before this Politico piece came out in my article “Like a Loaded Gun” and if anything I was frustrated by his unwillingness to reach definitive conclusions in, as he put it, “advance of the data.” He is going through the exit polls and election results with a fine tooth comb, not making public pronouncements in media and in front of state legislatures that he can prove it “18 different ways” as the Trump campaign is. Nor did he claim any such thing in 2004. He claimed, as others, that there is reason for skepticism.

First a key difference in the outcomes. Polls and exit polls predicted a victory for Kerry but “…and the exit polls had predicted an overwhelming victory for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. But as the night rolled on, the margins grew for President George W. Bush — especially in Ohio, where the race remained uncalled as the clock ticked into the wee morning hours” per the Politico piece Dec 19 2020

In sharp contrast, polls consistently predicted a large win for Biden throughout the 2020 campaign. This was only disputed, not by Fox news, but by the Trump campaign and it’s reliable disinformation water carriers OAN and Newsmax. Believe me, giving any credit to Fox news hurts in all the ways, but even Young Turks gives them credit for semi-reliable polling. Trump called all of the polls ‘fake news’ to lay the seeds for it’s disputation of the election. In fact it as I wrote in my article “ALEC is psychic” the American Legislation Exchange Counsel was preparing it’s lawsuits based on election fraud in Feb 2020, 9 months ahead of any possible evidence of electoral and/or voter fraud.

Sorry if I digress but there is so much bad faith and unclean hands in any article about Trump that it’s hard to keep a narrow focus. The point is Trump and Republicans overperformed in the 2020 election in re the polls as opposed to Kerry’s results in 2004. So the only reason Trump has to suspect fraud, and thus perforce the entire Republican party must suspect, is they didn’t get the outcome Trump wanted and insisted to his base would happen, in the face of all objective evidence to the contrary. (the theme of everything ever to do with Trump)

The fourth and last difference between the reactions, is the focus on ‘opacity’. And it is not without irony, that the Trump campaign as represented by Rudy Giuliani confused the very definition of this word in court. Trump, and his various mouthpieces in conservative media, have consistently attacked mail in ballots. The 2004 skeptics, and election integrity experts to this day, defend hand marked paper ballots (and mail in ballots are hand marked) as the bench mark for election integrity. In fact they specify hand marked hand counted paper ballots as the ideal, but hand marked can at least be readily recounted for accuracy. In Georgia from 2002 to 2018 the electronic voting machines didn’t even have a paper trail, making any recount absolutely meaningless, and their change post 2018 was court ordered.

The Trump campaign has only attacked Dominion voting machines, with never a mention of a problem with E S & S, an electronic voting machine company with a wider market share and a history of scandal. The 2004 skeptics and election integrity activists are against all voting machines that are opaque in their results, software, connection to the internet and strong proponents of mail in ballots. Because,whether there is fraud or not, if we cannot be sure we cannot trust. The Trump campaign has never endorsed election reform, never endorsed the SAFE act passed by congress, and in the past solicited Russian hacking. Their only problem with opacity is when they didn’t get the outcome they wanted.

And their is huge irony in media outlets throwing shade at activists for wanting to reduce opacity in an electronic process protected by copyright law from examination by the public when it comes to the selection of our government which affects 330 million people and the rest of the world, but crying loudly how the Facebook algorithm which greatly affects their distribution, visibility and income is too opaque and needs to be transparent. As Politico itself reports in a 2017 article.

To recap, there are four enormous differences between the 2004 skeptics and the Trump campaign and it’s army of lawyers outcry about 2020. First, the 2004 outcome didn’t match the advance data. Second, the outcry wasn’t by the Kerrey campaign but by data driven investigators. Thirdly, the claims by these skeptics were specific and cautious, whereas the Trump claims are sweeping and lack any supporting evidence. And lastly the 2004 skeptics, were upset because of the lack of transparency of the electronic process, the 2020 election deniers focus their attacks on mail in (and thusly) hand marked paper ballots.

The author, Doug Ecks, Esq is an attorney and would be election integrity activist as well as the author of “An America I am not ashamed of” as Doug X.