Luke Ford

From Wikipedia:

According to the New Yorker, von Spakovsky has promoted “the myth that Democratic voter fraud is common, and that it helps Democrats win elections”.[5]

Von Spakovsky has supported his claims about the extent of voter fraud by citing a 2000 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which purported to find 5400 instances of deceased people in Georgia voting in the last two decades.[5] The Journal-Constitution later revised its findings, noting that it had no evidence of a single deceased person voting and that the vast majority of the instances were due to clerical errors.[5]

In an interview with the New Yorker, von Spakovsky cited two scholars who he said could substantiate that voter-impersonation fraud was a significant threat: Robert Pastor of American University and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.[5] Von Spakovsky said that Pastor had personally experienced voter impersonation, but Pastor refuted von Spakovsky’s claim, saying, “I think they just mistakenly checked my name when my son voted—it was just a mistake. I don’t think that voter-impersonation fraud is a serious problem.”[5] Both Pastor and Sabato said that they would only support voter ID laws if voter IDs were made free and easily available to all, which is not what Republicans have tried.[5] Sabato, the author of “Dirty Little Secrets,” also described voter impersonation as “relatively rare today.”[5] In a 2011 article published by the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky again referred to Sabato as an authority to establish the existence of common voter fraud, along with “Stealing Elections,” a book by John Fund, whose claims of voter fraud have been extensively debunked,[32][33] and whom he neglects to identify as the co-author of a book they jointly wrote. He describes the efforts of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, his colleague both at the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and Heritage, to expose the alleged existence of extensive voter fraud, as “carefully described research,” although Kobach’s claims have also been shown to be vastly overstated.[34]

In a court decision, Fish v. Kobach, US District Court Judge Julie A. Robinson ruled that von Spakovsky’s claims of widespread voter fraud were not in fact found to be backed up with provable researched cases. Judge Robinson wrote that she gave his testimony little weight because it was “premised on several misleading and unsupported examples of non-citizen voter registration, mostly outside the State of Kansas.” She also noted that during the proceedings, Mr. von Spakovsky “could not identify any expert on the subject of non-citizen voter registration.” When he tried to use a list of 30 people provided by a Kansas election official as proof of voter fraud in one county, Judge Robinson wrote in her decision: “He later admitted during cross-examination that he had no personal knowledge as to whether or not any of these individuals had in fact falsely asserted U.S. citizenship when they became registered to vote and he did not examine the facts of these individual cases.”[35] Judge Robinson found witnesses for the defense were often found to be not credible, finding: “Defendant’s expert Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, ‘a think tank whose mission [is to] formulate and promote conservative public policies’.” Von Spakovsky “…cited a U.S. GAO study for the proposition that the GAO ‘found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 individuals called for jury duty from voter registration roles over a two-year period in just one U.S. district court were not U.S. citizens’.” However, on cross-examination, he admitted that the GAO study contained information on a total of eight district courts; half reported that not one non-citizen had been called for jury duty. The three remaining district courts reported that less than 1% of those called for jury duty from voter rolls were noncitizens. Therefore, his report misleadingly described the single district court with the highest percentage of people reporting that they were noncitizens, while omitting mention of the seven other courts described in the GAO report, including four that had zero incidents of noncitizens on voting rolls.[36] Robinson said, “While von Spakovsky’s lack of academic background is not fatal to his credibility …., his clear agenda and misleading statements … render his opinions unpersuasive.”

According to Professor Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, “there are a number of people who have been active in promoting false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud and using that as a pretext to argue for stricter voting and registration rules. And von Spakovsky’s at the top of the list.”[4] Hasen said that Spakovsky’s appointment to Donald Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity was a “a big middle finger” from Trump to people “serious about fixing problems with our elections.”[4]

From the Los Angeles Times Oct. 28, 2020:

Mail-in ballots are pouring in by the millions to election offices across the country, getting stacked and prepared for processing. But before the count comes the signature test.

Election workers eyeball voter signatures on ballots one by one, comparing the loop of an “L” or the squiggle of an “S” against other samples of that person’s writing.

When performed by professionals in criminal cases or legal proceedings, signature verification can take hours. But election employees in many states must do the job in as little as five seconds.

In an election marked by uncertainty amid the pandemic, the signature verification process represents one of the biggest unknowns: whether a system riddled with vulnerabilities will work on such a massive scale.

In 2016, mismatched signatures were the most common reason that mail ballots were rejected, according to federal officials. With record numbers of people voting by mail this cycle, ballots thrown out for signature problems and other issues have the potential to decide races where the margin of victory is slim.

From Ballotpedia:

* All 50 states require a valid signature for an absentee/mail-in ballot to be counted. According to The New York Times, 32 states use the signature provided with a voter’s absentee/mail-in ballot to verify his or her identity by comparing it with the signature on file (e.g., the signature on a driver’s license or voter registration application). Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia practice signature matching and allow voters to remedy mismatches. Another four states practice signature matching, but do not allow voters to remedy mismatches. Eighteen states either do not have signature matching laws or do not practice signature matching on a regular basis.[1]

Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, told The New York Times that signature matching “is the best way to strike a balance between security, transparency, and accessibility for voters” when done properly, including a process to fix signature mismatches. Mark Gaber, the director of trial litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, said that signature matching was problematic, with courts having found “that there’s a high risk of wrongly being identified as not having signed your ballot.”

* Most states have laws allowing someone other than a voter to return the voter’s absentee/mail-in ballot. These laws, referred to as ballot collection or ballot harvesting laws, vary by state. As of August 2020, 24 states and the District of Columbia permitted someone chosen by the voter to return the ballot on the voter’s behalf in most cases. Twelve states specified who may return ballots (i.e., household members, caregivers, and/or family members) in most cases. One state explicitly allowed only the voter to return his or her ballot. Thirteen states did not specify whether someone may return another’s ballot.

From Forbes.com Nov. 10, 2020:

President Donald Trump, during an address to the nation on Thursday, attempted to delegitimize and attack the integrity of the 2020 U.S. election by falsely asserting that election officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan tried to ban Republican observers from polling stations, an accusation for which he provided no evidence.

“In Pennsylvania, Democrats have gone to the state Supreme Court to try and ban our election observers,” Trump declared Thursday evening, adding, “They don’t want anybody watching them as they count the ballots.”

This is untrue, as there is zero evidence of Democrats attempting to ban Republican representatives from observing the counting of votes.

The president is seemingly referring to a case adjudicated Thursday morning in which the Trump campaign was requesting closer observation of the ballot canvassing process in Pennsylvania, but legitimate poll watchers were never systemically barred from any location.

New York Times reports Nov. 7, 2020:

On Twitter and in interviews, President Trump and his supporters have alleged that his campaign observers were blocked from ballot-counting rooms, hindering their ability to witness and report several instances of what the Trump campaign has baselessly claimed was widespread election fraud that has marred the results.

“THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS,” Mr. Trump alleged in a tweet on Saturday. “BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE.”

The charge was without any basis in fact, and was, in reality, contradicted by several of Mr. Trump’s own legal filings.

In cases that his campaign brought in Nevada and Pennsylvania — one dismissed, the other pending — it acknowledged that its observers were indeed present in the counting rooms. His lawyers were, rather, asking the courts to force election officials to allow Mr. Trump’s observers to get even closer views of the counting activity.

A judge in the Nevada case dismissed the bid, ruling that Mr. Trump’s lawyers “failed to prove” that local election officials “interfered with any right they or anyone else has an observer.” In the Philadelphia case, the Trump campaign succeeded in forcing city elections officials to allow observers to be up to six feet from counting tables, as opposed to the roughly 20-foot observation line officials had previously set. But during a hearing for a federal version of that suit on Thursday, Judge Paul Diamond of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania pressed a lawyer for Mr. Trump on whether the campaign’s observers did, in fact, have access to the facility. The lawyer said, grudgingly, that there were “a nonzero number” of people in the room. (In the interest of expediting the case, Judge Diamond pushed the Philadelphia board to agree to an expanded number of observers.)

A case the Trump campaign brought in Chatham County, Ga., was, in fact, based on a Trump observer’s allegation that he had seen workers count some 53 ballots that weren’t valid — a thin charge that the observer could not support in court; the judge threw out the suit on Thursday.

Mr. Trump and his allies have seized on photographs of election workers at one point using cardboard to block windows of a large counting room inside the TFC Center in Detroit, alleging that workers there were covering up nefarious activity.

In fact, The Detroit Free Press reported, the cardboard was meant to block the view of boisterous protesters outside the room who were trying to photograph and video the workers handling ballots with sensitive personal information about voter preferences. At the time, The Free Press reported, there were 134 Republican observers inside the counting area, along with a similar number of Democratic observers.

From the AP, Nov. 14, 2020:

President Donald Trump’s legal allies have launched a flurry of lawsuits arguing that widespread fraud could have been committed because its poll watchers didn’t get proper access to the voting process. Most of those lawsuits have been dismissed over lack of evidence of election fraud.

Trump has tried to argue that there is a link between some of the complaints of partisan poll watchers and the results of the election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden. But there has been no credible information to validate his assertions. In fact, both state and federal officials have praised the 2020 election as safe and secure.

WHAT IS A POLL WATCHER?

A poll watcher is a partisan appointee who monitors voting or ballot counting to help ensure their party gets a fair shot. They are not supposed to interfere in the electoral process, except to report issues to party officials or polling place authorities, and are typically required to register in advance with the local election office.

Tasked this year with monitoring a record number of mail ballots, poll watchers are designated by a political party or campaign to report any concerns they may have. With a few reports of overly aggressive poll watchers, election officials said they were carefully balancing access with the need to minimize disruptions and social distance concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. In many places, they were ordered to stand 6 feet away.

Monitoring polling places and election offices is allowed in most states, but rules vary and there are certain limits to avoid any harassment or intimidation.

WERE TRUMP’S POLL WATCHERS DENIED ACCESS?

The Trump campaign said from the beginning that Republican poll watchers were being improperly denied access to observe the counting of ballots. Not so, countered election officials in key battleground states, who said rules were being followed and they were committed to transparency.

In Pennsylvania, for example, state election officials said poll watchers were certified in every county. Republican lawyers acknowledged in court that they had observers watching polls and mail-in ballots being processed.

In Michigan, a Trump campaign lawsuit included assertions from their observers that poll workers rolled their eyes when viewing votes for Trump, wore masks or clothing supporting the Black Lives Matter movement or appeared to double-count ballots. Other lawsuits claimed poll watchers were temporarily denied access in some locations, but there has been no evidence to back it up. Nor was there evidence of votes being miscounted out of political bias. And most of the litigation alleging this has been dismissed.

Politifact writes about the most talked about example of purported fraud in the 2020 election:

A video presented by Rudy Giuliani and promoted by the Trump campaign purports to show Georgia election workers illegally counting suitcases full of ballots after election observers had been told to leave. The video itself doesn’t prove this claim.

Georgia election officials, including Republican voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling, publicly disputed claims that the video shows fraudulent activity.

Officials said that there was never an instruction for observers to leave, and that there were no suitcases full of ballots. The bins in the video were standard ballot containers, and the footage shows what officials described as the normal tabulation process.

* Nobody was ever told to leave, [Frances Watson, the Georgia secretary of state’s chief investigator] told Lead Stories. But some observers exited after the election workers responsible for opening the envelopes and verifying the ballots had finished their job and started taking off for the night.