You may remember that the WI GOP hired a former WI State Supreme Court justice to lead the efforts to find fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It was suggested that hiring a former justice gave the effort an air of legitimacy. Well, not really. Here is what was divulged in court today.
- Justice Michael Gableman did not own a computer and as such had to write most of his report at the local public library. This while he was being paid $11k per month for his work.
- He acknowledged that he acquired Covid while attending a Mike Lindell event in South Dakota and that the two weeks he was sick interrupted his efforts. Attending the event of one of the biggest election fraud nutters does not exactly provide a patina of impartiality.
- He is unable to provide some requested records because he deleted his yahoo mail account that contained much of his work on this audit. Well, actually, he asked someone else to delete it for him and he isn't sure who that was. regardless, he can't access the records.
- The judge presiding today pointed out that during the two weeks Gableman claims he was bedridden with ZCovid, he also claims he wrote a seven page report at a public library.
Gableman was known as a political hack before he was elected to a single term at the state Supreme Court and he didn't bother running for reelection for that same reason. He was a horrible choice to lead any effort that is even trying to appear non-partisan and the results and what we learned today prove it. Gableman made the Cyber Ninjas look good, and I would have told you that was impossible.
Stick with me, this is going to change directions twice.
Please tell us in an itemized list the things that Cyber Ninjas, specifically that one firm out of the 4 engaged in Arizona, did wrong in that audit. Accusations not sufficient. Actual things they did wrong, not things you don't like.
I've asked that question several times on this board. Invariably, the response includes an attempt at Doug Logan's post from a discussion board, usually misquoted.
So if that is a disqualifier, should Dominion Voting Systems be banned from operating election equipment during live elections because one of their senior executives, Eric Coomer, posted numerous anti-Trump name calling rants on Facebook? Coomer confirmed them. The only thing he denies is taking part in a teleconference where he was quoted as saying "Trump is not going to win. I made [effing] sure of that."
Gableman deleted audit files from a Yahoo account. Did anyone mention that all of that is recoverable? It is. Yahoo has real backups. As does any capable systems operation.
Election officials in Georgia deleted 1.7 million ballot images from the 2020 election, despite state and federal law requiring election records to be retained for 24 and 22 months, respectively. These images are the legally counted ballots in any election that uses electronic tabulators. That's why the system preserves them.
Maricopa County officials deleted 1.5 million ballot images in the days before equipment was turned over for the audit, in the name of making a backup, which they have never produced, even for third party investigators that they helped select. This act violated 3 legal court ordered subpoenas.
Backups don't destroy originals, that's why they are called backups. This process had not been done for prior elections, and the files remained intact from the primaries and the 2018 election process. In fact, Arizona still had old election data files from two other states on their disk array, and a second bootable operating system. These things were not found in two post election system inspections by firms approved by the Federal EAC to conduct pre and post election equipment verification.
Have these election officials been arrested, charged with their crimes or even banned from future elections? Why the hell not? Who is accountable for doing that?
I'm no fan of politicians leading audits. This defies the very nature of them. Auditors should be outsiders, not engaged or beholden to government officials. In business, you don't get to hire an auditor because he used to work here. That is, in fact, a reason not to hire them.
There should be audits every election. Government requires audits of publicly traded companies that
might attract investments from the public. Might invest. They must be conducted by third party, independent auditors with no connections to the company.
I say we hold elections to no less standard. The public has more at stake with elected officials than with individual stock purchases. Most of the public will never own an individual stock share. All will be governed by the officials elected.
Those elected officials are the ones making these decisions about not punishing those who would violate election law.
"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." ~ Thomas Sowell