Forging Ahead
Ada County Ballot Verifier Tool plus updates from ID, TX, PA, GA, AZ, CA and around the US
In July, I will be attending a family reunion. Like many families, mine has diverse and passionate opinions on politics. A request, mostly by those who are not passionate about politics, is to not discuss it.
That is a shame. I think the healthiest relationships are those where we can disagree on important things but still respect the other person. To me, that is what ‘iron sharpens iron’ is all about. We grow by hearing the opinions of others while voicing ours as well. There can be sparks, but the engagement can help refine our own thinking and align it closer to the truth.
Recently, Ada County Elections announced a portal where they post not only the ballot images of recent and future elections, but the corresponding tabulation (or ‘cast vote record’) alongside. This will enable any citizen to review any race and even run their own form of hand count to verify that the official count was correct.
There was no requirement that Ada County do this. In my conversations with both Trent (County Clerk) and Saul (Elections Manager), the purpose was to be as transparent as possible.
I applaud them for what they have done. It cannot be easy to hear the repeated accusations that they are part of the rigging of our elections. It would be understandable if they just threw up their hands and put up a wall between them and the public. Other election departments around the country have done that.
But they have instead done something unique. While it won’t satisfy all of the concerns people have with our elections, it is a big step in the right direction. This tool provides accessible data that can help us understand what is really going on with our elections.
While several local papers (here and here) provided encouraging coverage, one international outlet opted instead to make it a story about pushing back on ‘election deniers’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’. I won’t link to the article from Wired where I was interviewed (and they got my name wrong), but you can find it if you so desire.
Solutions can take time and effort, and big problems like the lack of trust in our elections can be daunting to even try. But we must. That means reaching out to those on the other side of the issue and working with them if they are receptive. It does not take agreement in order to cooperate, just a mutual desire to pursue truth. That is what Ada County has enabled with this tool. That is the real story here and a great example of how we forge ahead.
TX/PA/AZ: Are Illegals Registering to Vote? - The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires states to verify new federal voter registrations with the State DMV. In cases where no driver’s license is provided to register, States can provide the last four digits of the SSN via the Help America Voter Verification system (HAVV). HAVV transaction information is public, and alarms have been raised that some states have an inordinate number of these transactions. Could this mean a slew of people without driver’s licenses (ie illegals) are registering to vote? The three states mentioned above all deny this is happening and the supposed levels of transactions do not match with the number of new registrations on the rolls. (The linked article above may be paywalled but you can see the TX Secretary of State response and refutation that this is occurring here).
ID and US: Will Election Officials Kill Ranked Choice Voting? - From my own interaction with county clerks in Idaho, most do not want to speak out for or against Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). In the linked article, the WA Secretary of State does not hold back - he used to be for it and now is very much against it. While the silence is due to not wanting to weigh in on a controversial political matter, we need the clerks to speak up about the impact on election administration. RCV will require updates to voting systems, complicates the tabulation process, causes voter confusion, and increases training requirements. Voters need to hear the impact RCV would have on our elections from the experts regardless of the politics.
ID: Canyon County Turnaround - Last fall, the ‘Logic and Accuracy’ test in Canyon County raised concerns when photocopied ballots were accepted by the tabulation machines. Since then, Canyon County has implemented a unique ID on each ballot, and they showed in their most recent test that duplicate ballots were rejected by the tabulators.
ID: Student ID Prohibition Upheld - Unanimous decision by Idaho State Supreme Court to uphold legality of legislation that banned the use of student IDs for voting.
GA: Fulton County Reprimand - While it would not change the outcome of the 2020 election, Fulton County elections was reprimanded by the Georgia State Board of Elections for mishandling of ballots. The county is unable to determine whether more than 3000 ballots were double scanned. This is striking as most counties have rigorous ballot inventory procedures that would indicate a problem if ballots were double scanned.
CA: Konnech Dismissal Political? Shocking! - About 18 months ago, the election integrity world was aglow with the arrest of Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, a company contracted in many states to manage poll worker data (among other things). The allegation was that confidential employee data was illegally routed to servers in China. Remarkably, the prosecution would take place in left leaning California with a very left leaning Los Angeles County prosecutor, aka a ‘Soros DA’. Then it all went poof! Yu was released, charges were dropped, and Yu actually won a settlement of $5 million for the incident. Now we hear that the original prosecutor had objected to the dismissal of this case and was put on administrative leave. He was only reinstated recently, cleared of any charges of wrongdoing. His complaint is now moving forward alleging that the DA’s moves were politically motivated.
US: Absentee Voting Fraud as Old as Absentee Voting - Historian Patrick O’Donnell (no relation) shares some stories about ballot fraud that occurred during the Civil War when soldiers were allowed to vote remotely.
Well done, Tim! Your articles are always so helpful. Thank you.
I hope your visit with family in July goes well. The reluctance to discuss politics among family and friends is part of the reason we have so many uninformed voters. It’s truly sad, but isolation and self-censorship have played an enormous part of every bad thing that has happened to Americans, especially in the last 4+ years.
For more about Ranked Choice Voting and its harmful side effects (along with links to several resources), please hop over to (short URL): https://tinyurl.com/4m8rbbun
For more about Ada County’s amazing Ballot Verification tool, see (short URL): https://tinyurl.com/584mhdey
And finally, check out the comprehensive voting guide at (short URLs) https://tinyurl.com/yh8jhppm or a very short one at https://tinyurl.com/4he9c5mc.
Thanks for the update.