Tag Archives: Margin of Theft

The Good, The Bad, and The Interesting

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Well, that election isn’t working out as the polling suggested, but there were a few good races. Consider FL-1. Matt Gaetz held the seat for Republican, crushing accused felon Rebekah Jones with a better than 2:1 margin. Consider TN-5, my old home district. Andy Ogles will be the first Republican to represent that district. Ever.

And in the deep blue state of Maryland, I live in a deep red county. No Democrat won any of the local races here in Carroll County. While all of the statewide races were won by Democrats, none of them received as much as 32 percent of the vote here.

The generally bad performance of Republicans in holding (PA) or flipping (GA, AZ) senate seats may give Chuck Schumer another two years as Majority Leader—and to confirm judges. That would be very bad.

While no one was paying attention something interesting has been going on in MD-6. David Trone was expected to hold the seat for the Democrats, and the last polling showed him up about 6 percent. He was more than 10,000 votes ahead in the early voting and the mail in ballots counted on election day. However, with all precincts reporting their election day results Neil Parrott has a 4,457 vote lead out of the 201,035 counted so far. A 2.26 percent lead is generally outside the margin of theft, but Trone has a better than 3:1 edge in the mail in ballots counted to date, and mail ballots postmarked by election day can be counted as late as the second Friday after the election (the 18th). Also, not all of the mail in ballots that have arrived have been counted. Some are being held to be counted with the provisional ballots. (Counting the provisional ballots begins on 16 November, the second Wednesday after the election.) The State Board of Elections claims this helps preserve the secrecy of the provisional ballots.

Some mail-in ballots will be counted when the provisional ballots are counted. This helps preserve the secrecy of the votes on provisional ballots. For example, if only one voter in a precinct voted a provisional ballot, it is possible you could know how that voter voted. If five mail-in ballots are counted with that provisional ballot, the selections of the provisional voter remain secret.

Of course, it also provides a reservoir of votes to be found for the proper candidate. MD-6 shouldn’t be too close to call, but it is.

Stay tuned.

Oh, one more thing … I selected today’s Quote of the Day on Monday. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

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My sense of the mood of the country and the results I’m seeing published in polls lead me to expect that next week’s elections will result in significant gains by Republicans. The House and Senate should flip, and so should many state and local offices. We might even see Republicans winning in states such as Oregon.

We might, but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.

What she sings depends on whether the crest of the expected red wave peaks sufficiently over the margin of theft.

Vote, and do it on election day. Early voting provides data about how many votes need to be found at 3 am on Wednesday. Failure to vote provides a voter registration to be found at 3 am.

A Civic Duty

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This may come as a shock to some of the Gentle Readers, but there are people out there who don’t believe the 2020 elections were fair and honest. They feel they were stolen. It’s not good for a large portion of the electorate to believe they were cheated. Therefore, it’s important that as many candidates win with vote counts outside the margin of theft.

Let me be clear about what I mean. Consider the following election scenario.

After the legitimate votes have been countered, the results are as follows:

Candidate R 1,227,500
Candidate D 1,225,000
Candidate 3 50,000

It turns out that most of the vote counters are affiliated with the D party, so they begin to look for “missing” votes, and they “find” them in a county where the D:R voter registration is 10:1 and the usual vote favors the Ds by 5:1. The actual turnout in the county was a bit low (lack of enthusiasm for Candidate D), but they are able to “find” 13,000 ballots without exceeding the total registration numbers for the county. When those votes are added, the result becomes

Candidate R 1,229,500
Candidate D 1,235,000
Candidate 3 51,000

That’s the sort of fraud that is possible when the vote between to top two candidates is only 0.2 percent apart. If the same 2,500,000 voter turnout had left larger margin, the search of “missing” votes would have had to expand beyond safe precincts into more competitive areas. A 2 percent spread is hard to overcome. A 4 percent spread is safer.

One of the best things we can do to make sure the election is fair is to cast our own ballots that can be legitimately counted rather than leave our unvoted registration as a vote to be “found.”

So go vote on election day.

The Margin of Theft

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I’ve been using the term Margin of Theft as it relates to elections. Let me be clear about what I mean. Consider the following election scenario.

After the legitimate votes have been countered, the results are as follows:

Candidate R 1,227,500
Candidate D 1,225,000
Candidate 3 50,000

It turns out that most of the vote counters are affiliated with the D party, so they begin to look for “missing” votes, and they “find” them in a county where the D:R voter registration is 10:1 and the usual vote favors the Ds by 5:1. The actual turnout in the county was a bit low (lack of enthusiasm for Candidate D), so they are able to “find” 13,000 votes without exceeding the total registration numbers for the county. When those votes are added, the result becomes

Candidate R 1,229,500
Candidate D 1,235,000
Candidate 3 51,000

That’s the sort of fraud that is possible when the vote between to top two candidates is only 0.2 percent apart. If the same 2,500,000 voter turnout had left larger margin, the search of “missing” votes would have had to expand beyond safe precincts into more competitive areas. A 2 percent spread in hard to overcome. A 4 percent spread is safer.

Go vote. One of the best things we can do to make sure the election is fair is to cast our own votes that can be legitimately counted rather than leave our unvoted registration as a vote to be “found.”

When He’s Out of the Basement

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Where has Joe Biden been going to campaign when he does leave his basement?

Well, he was campaigning in Las Vegas when he removed his mask to cough Friday.

Hillary carried Nevada in 2016. Obama carried the state twice. If Biden’s cruising to a blowout victory, why is he campaigning in a state that Hillary won? Perhaps this sentence from a local Las Vegas TV station‘s coverage of the first of Biden’s two events yesterday points us toward the answer to that question—

He spoke to a small crowd around 11:30 a.m. at the East Las Vegas Community Center.

When Donald Trump held a rally in Nevada in September, the Nevada Independent reported that the local fire department estimated about 5,600 people were in the venue and security estimated as many as 20,000 were outside.

It’s almost as if the Democrats are afraid that Trump will win by a margin beyond the threshold of theft.

Non-Citizens Voting in Maryland?

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A suit has been filed in U. S. District Court against the Frederick County Board of Elections and the Maryland State Board of Elections alleging that non-citizens are registered to vote in Frederick County. One must be a U. S. citizen to register to vote in Maryland. The plaintiffs claim that persons dismissed from jury duty because they are not citizens were registered to vote.

Here’s the complaint that was filed last week. I have redacted the addresses of the plaintiffs. I have also redacted the exhibits which contain voter registration and jury pool information because it contain names and addresses of individuals not related to the case either as plaintiffs or possible non-citizen voters.

Don’t Get Cocky, Kid

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The Denver Post reports that Republican voters seem to be getting their ballots in faster that Democrats. Colorado has gone to 100 % mail-in ballots.

As of Wednesday, the most recent day the Colorado secretary of state’s office released ballot return data, 145,824 Republican voters had mailed back their ballots while 105,401 Democrats had done the same. More than 77,000 unaffiliated voters had also returned their completed ballots.

If that trend continues, the Republican vote may exceed the margin of theft.