I suspect that, were you to visit the residence of Kari Lake or Mark Finchem, you would notice something in common: a VCR with its clock constantly blinking, “:00.” Both seem terrified of technology, especially scanners that count ballots instead of humans. When scanners in Arizona counted more votes for Joe Biden than Donald Trump in 2020, Lake and Finchem were convinced there was a Democrat ghost in the machines.
Several audits failed to ratify their suspicion. Even the clown posse audit by the “Cyber Ninjas” failed to find irregularities. Lake, a Republican candidate for Governor, and Finchem, a Republican candidate for Secretary of State, are impervious to factual data. Their preferred candidate lost and, by God, that means the process was flawed.
They even took their suspicions to court – briefly.
“Not only do plaintiffs fail to produce any evidence that a full hand count would be more accurate,” ruled U. S. District Court Judge John Tuchi, “but a hand count would also require Maricopa County to hire 25,000 temporary staff and find two million square feet of space. In fact, with the county’s current employees it would be an impossibility to have the ballots counted in order to perform a canvass by the 20th day after the election, as required by law.”
Lake and Finchem ran into a pair of roadblocks: They failed to produce evidence and, even if they had, their suggested remedy was physically and logistical impossible. But they persist in blinking “zero” after the court reset their clocks.
Elsewhere in Arizona, Cochise County flirted with mandating a manual hand-count, eliminating the scanners. They backed off when the Secretary of State and their own County Attorney warned them their plan was illegal. The County Attorney was particularly persuasive. He warned the County Supervisors they could face personal legal liability if they went through with it.
The push to replace scanners with a hand-count is not limited to Arizona. At least half a dozen states have introduced legislation to prohibit machine tabulation in favor of a hand-count by humans. Voting machines are able to process thousands of ballots with remarkable accuracy and have been found reliable for years.
“Republicans are arguing that humans are more likely than machines to get the count right,” notes Charles Stewart III, writing in the Washington Post. “Evidence, however, suggests the opposite: Computers — which ballot scanners rely on — are very good at tedious, repetitive tasks. Humans are bad at them. And counting votes is tedious and repetitive.” The old saying goes, “to err is human,” not “to err is machine-based.”
Maggie Astor recently wrote in The New York Times that “Research indicates that hand counting increases errors,” citing studies from 2012 and 2018 that found machine scanners were more accurate than humans.
“Hand counting is ‘incredibly labor-intensive, very slow and, it turns out, subject to more error than having a machine do it,’” wrote Astor, quoting Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard who led both studies.
She also quoted Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization focused on election technology, who said, “People who think they would have greater confidence in this process think so because they haven’t seen it. The process in real life would not inspire confidence at all on this scale.”
Consider this “process in real life” example from Lawrence O’Donnell’s book, Playing with Fire:
“Johnson picked up the name ‘Landslide Lyndon’ for his 1948 victory in the Democratic primary for the Senate, which he won by a mere 87 votes. That primary was a runoff, and Johnson’s opponent, Coke Stevenson, was declared the winner at first. Then came late tallies from one of the most corrupt counties in Texas, reflecting a thoroughly organized effort, throughout many counties, headed by Johnson’s campaign manager (and future Texas governor) John Connally, to falsify hundreds – some claimed thousands – of ballots, with friendly judges certifying them. One tally was hand-altered, gaining Johnson 200 votes simply by replacing the 7 in 765 with a 9.” (pp. 33-34)
A hand-count is subject to error because, as Astor notes, “Humans are bad at tedious tasks.” True enough, but hand-counts are also subject to fraud. Want to change a 7 to a 9? No problem. Change a 1 to a 4? Even simpler.
Machine counts are superior to manual hand-counts because they are faster and more reliable. Nonetheless, writes Stewart, “we can see the most active Republicans starting to support scanning bans, suggesting that Republican-led state legislatures may file bills on this issue after the midterms. Bills have already been filed in Arizona, Missouri and New Hampshire.”
Why would politicians want to replace a reliable vote counting method with one that can be manipulated?
Maybe that’s the idea.
© 2022 by Mike Tully
<<< YOU CAN READ / DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION BY CLICKING HERE >>>
Malcolm X Explains the Georgia Senate Race
There is something unique about the race for the U. S. Senate in Georgia that pits incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock against Republican Herschel Walker. It’s so unique that the use of the terms “Democrat” and “Republican” fail to describe the contest. A better way to understand the Warnock – Walker race is to view it through the lens of the antebellum South. Our guide is a black activist from the 1960s, Malcolm X.
“So you have two types of Negro,” he told an audience at Michigan State University in 1963. “The old type and the new type. Most of you know the old type. When you read about him in history during slavery he was called ‘Uncle Tom.’ He was the house Negro. And during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro.”
“The house Negro usually lived close to his master,” he explained. “He dressed like his master. He wore his master’s second-hand clothes. He ate food that his master left on the table. And he lived in his master’s house–probably in the basement or the attic–but he still lived in the master’s house.”
“His master’s pain was his pain,” added Malcolm X. “And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.”
Malcolm X described the other type. “But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses–the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he’d die. If his house caught on fire, they’d pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.”
Hershel Walker is indisputably one of the worst U. S. Senate candidates in American history. Consider his recollection of his time as a patient in a psychiatric hospital: “They told me I had a mental problem…I remember sitting here in this hospital and going, ‘Whoa, these people here are crazy, and I’m not like them.” And there is this quote: “And people say, ‘Herschel, you played football.’ But I said, ‘Guys, I also was valedictorian of my class. I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class in college.” Not only was he not the valedictorian, he didn’t even graduate from college. He has also lied about supervising hospitals and being an FBI agent.
And who could forget this: “But since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China, bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we’ve got to clean that back up.”
Despite the inanity of these statements, not to mention the recent persuasive evidence that Walker – a radically anti-abortion candidate – paid for a girl friend’s abortion, the Republican establishment fully embraced him. Why? Because he’s a loyal, reliable house Negro.
Walker is a Senate candidate because Donald Trump wanted it that way. In 1984, Trump bought a struggling football team, the New Jersey Generals of the flash-in-the pan United States Football League. Walker was the star of the team. He was Trump’s house Negro.
Last October, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this about Walker: “Herschel is the only one who can unite the party, defeat Senator Warnock, and help us take back the Senate. I look forward to working with Herschel in Washington to get the job done.”
The old Kentuckian knows a loyal house Negro when he sees one. Walker will do what he’s told, when to do it, and how to feel about it. Sure, he’ll make statements that make Republican leaders’ skin crawl. But they know he’ll serve his masters and that’s good enough for them.
Politico reported that “Raphael Warnock won his seat running as an activist preacher.” His fellow Democratic Senator, Cory Booker of New Jersey, remarked, “There’s never been anybody like him in the United States Senate.” Warnock is the field Negro to Walker’s house Negro.
Politico draws the contrast this way: “Warnock — the first Black senator from Georgia and the first Black Democrat in the Senate from the South, and not just a pastor but the pastoral heir of Martin Luther King Jr. at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — has made his life’s work a response to systemic racism. Walker has all but denied racism’s existence.”
The GOP has grown more openly racist during the Trump years and Walker is their perfect house Negro. Warnock is their greatest fear.
The race for the U. S. Senate in Georgia this year is not Democrat versus Republican. It’s field Negro versus house Negro. And Malcolm X saw it coming nearly six decades ago.
© 2022 by Mike Tully
<<< YOU CAN READ / DOWNLOAD A PDF VERSION HERE >>>