Dakota Beacon

Suspected widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election thrives. Deniers are either misinformed or willfully engage in cover-up. Those recognizing election fraud are shamed as kooks and conspiracy theorists. Boiled down for brevity, a wide population distrusts the election process. The reasons for this distrust must be investigated. Demeaning half the voters is no solution.

To agree or disagree about massive election fraud in 2020 matters not at this point. We must be concerned when half the voters believe large-scale fraud handed the election to Biden and Harris.

Rasmussen’s poll indicates that 47% of voters believe fraud swayed the election. Some discount Rasmussen as leaning right. Even left-leaning Quinnipiac and Reuters consistently claim that half of Republicans believe there was massive fraud. Reuters said that 16% of Democrats and 33% of Independents agreed. Quinnipiac notes a sizable percentage of all registered voters, 34 %, not believing the Biden-Harris ticket won. Uneasiness riles with more fraud exposed. Many feel last November’s election was the strangest in America’s history.

Distrust deepens with non-stop denials and censorship by tech giants and the media. The more invested they become in driving their preferred narratives, the more reason people have to distrust elections. Their claim that election fraud is “extremely rare” is as laughable as claiming that human beings would never cheat when power is the prize. The crisis of trust in elections deepens.

Indications cry out for post-election audits to verify election integrity. In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court opined in “Crawford vs Marion County Election Board” that “flagrant examples of fraud have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists… [and] demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.” The Heritage Foundation confirmed this by compiling the Election Fraud Database (www.heritage.org) showing that election fraud persists in American elections. The database illustrates the extent of fraud from 1979 through the 2020 election. A recap of the data shows 1,328 proven instances of voter fraud, 1,143 criminal convictions, 48 civil penalties, 99 diversion programs, 21 judicial findings, and 17 official findings.

            Nobody knows the true extent of election fraud. Still, there are far too many vulnerabilities in the system to sustain public confidence. Flooded with election jargon by the media (adjudication, canvassing, recount, certification, risk-limiting audit, forensic audit,) the public reasonably believes that these technical terms portray quality care assuring election integrity. Not true. Claiming we have excellent election integrity has no basis in fact. No proof exists of what election integrity looks like. No objective analysis of a state, county or precinct vote exists.

All states make vague attempts at post-election verification. A vote recount simply double-checks the math. Do all the numbers add up? A handful of states do not offer a recount process at all. Canvassing verifies that no votes were lost in the balloting process. Certification is a state legislative stamp-of-approval. It follows canvassing and recounts and is made when no serious errors are identified.

Then there are audits with three main objectives: to identify and fix honest mistakes, to detect evidence of malfeasance, and to maintain/restore public confidence in an election. A risk-limiting audit (RLA) designates an audit limiting the risk that a contest might be incorrectly certified. RLAs are developed using statistically-based sampling techniques. If the margin of an election is wide, few ballots are reviewed. If the margin is narrow, more must be reviewed up to the point that enough “evidence” is provided to confirm the election result.

A limited forensic election audit precedes a full forensic audit (FFA). An FFA has never been done in any state. To be sure, such audits must not be mandated by the federal government. Rather, they must be willingly implemented by the several states at the demand of their citizens. This happens now with Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and more.

            An FFA is a comprehensive, in-depth investigation into vote accuracy in these categories:

--Did only legally eligible citizens vote -- and just once?

--Did the voting machines accurately report all ballots received with no changes (i.e., Dominion Voting Systems)?

--Did third parties illegally change or delete any legitimate ballots or add ballots?

None of these questions can be resolved by an election recount, canvass, or certification. Until resolved, elections will remain in doubt. Errors, omissions, and mistakes by election officials and careless, shoddy election practices and procedures, and lack of training cause problems. These problems demonstrate states’ election vulnerabilities.

We must solve this riddle. The future of election integrity, and freedom, depends on it. Why not investigate? Why let the abnormal become the “new normal” and put self-governance at risk?

Real science-based (forensic) audits are the only way we can verify election integrity. No state, county, or precinct has ever done a full forensic audit and only a few counties have had a partial forensic audit. Indeed, we have no legitimate basis for believing that the several states’ election systems are honest and accurate.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).