Since last week’s post on the 2022 mid-terms Mid-term-2022-takeaways, we now know the not to be believed results in Arizona along with a few other items of note.
Why Did Republicans Disappoint?
Republicans did not do as well as expected in part because of kingmakers like Mitch McConnell didn’t put the money he controlled in the right places. He actually supported one Republican over another in Alaska while giving no money to a Republican facing a tough race in Arizona (who was outspent $78M to $12M). We know the other kingmaker, Donald Trump, also didn’t financially support any candidates with his war chest either while advocating for a few not-so-great candidates.
We also knew going in Republicans had a little bit of an uphill battle to start with. Of the uncontested Senate seats, 36 were Democrats and 29 Republicans, giving the Democrats a 7-seat edge before voting even began. Furthermore, we knew most House races are not competitive; 80% of the races were forgone conclusions, so Republicans needed to do well in the 80 or 90 competitive House seats to clean up like they were expected to.
Republicans needed a consistent message, something other than “we are better than the Democrats”. However, Republicans in Florida and New York did better because they had good candidates at the top of the state’s tickets. DeSantis governed like no executive I have ever seen in my lifetime and was rewarded for talking less and doing more. Without DeSantis or Zeldin at the top of the ticket in these two states, Republicans would not control the House next year. In addition, Ohio and Iowa also turned even more red. Although Republicans had disappointing losses in the House, they won the popular vote 51 to 47, an eight-point swing away from the Democrat advantage from just two years ago. There is something for Republicans build on here despite the many disappointments. As of Wednesday, 11/16:
Perhaps too many paid attention to the pre-election polls as well. They are inaccurate to start with–all of them. Pollsters don’t correctly apply mathematical theorems, but the numbers come sort of close some of the time and we believe they will be right more often. In addition, polls take a snapshot in time, but the election actually takes place over several weeks. Three quarters of all voting is mail-in or early voting. What are these polls measuring the last couple weeks of the election? Polls are interesting, but you shouldn’t neglect to vote because you think you know what will happen.
Republicans lost young voters and independents although unhappy with Biden’s performance broke 50-50 for both parties. Unmarried women and avid pro-choice advocates were drawn out by ballot initiatives and abortion advertising. It is an immoral practice, but it is still a winning issue for Democrats. Biden lured young voters with his promise to relieve student loan debt and the courts gracefully waited until after the election to yank that carrot away. Fooled you guys!
It Has Happened Before
Republicans can also take heart by looking back to the 1978 mid-terms. Former President Carter’s party held on to both houses of Congress in 1978 despite an absolutely dreadful economy. Voters gave him another two years to improve. The economy got worse and the Reagan Revolution arrived in 1980. I think voters are giving Biden two more years to fix things. Will this president, who is as bad or worse than Carter at solving economic problems turn it around in two years or will the Democrats be wiped out in 2024? Can they cheat enough to avoid disaster in two years?
When do We Count?
Florida counted 98% of its vote on election night and we knew the winners of all races there. Eight days later, we still don’t know the winner in six House races in California.
In California District 3, only 58% of the vote has been counted after eight days. California District 22 hasn’t even counted half the vote yet. In fact, eight days after the election the counting continues in all 54 California districts. No district has counted more than 86% of the vote to this point. Republicans have a decent lead in Districts 3 and 22, but will they hold or will new votes be found during the next week? When counting takes so long how can we be sure that something fishy is not going on? Who is watching the counters all this time?
In all the other states, just three races remain uncalled: one each in Maine and Alaska because these states use “ranked voting” in which second choices are used if a candidate doesn’t win 50%, and one Colorado because it is pending a runoff. Why does California take so long? Control of the House no longer depends on California, but what if it did? Could we be certain of the results which might take another week to tally?
Arizona
The Arizona governor’s race has now been called for Katie Hobbs; This is a result I can scarcely comprehend. Lake and DeSantis were the best candidate the Republicans put up in any race, not just this year but in a long time. Hobbs was a dreadful candidate who avoided a debate with Lake and interviews with reporters she doesn’t like.
US House candidates in Arizona picked up two seats in the mid-terms in a good year for Arizona Republicans, yet Lake couldn’t defeat the shrinking violet Hobbs?
This is how you win elections as Democrats? Dana Bash asked why Hobbs refused to debate:
HOBBS: “Kari Lake has made it clear, time and time again, that she’s not interested in having substantive in-depth conversations about the issues that matter to Arizonans. She only wants a scenario where she can control the dialogue. And she’s refused to sit down on a one-on-one lengthy conversation to really clarify with Arizonans where she is on the issues. She’s the one who’s afraid of talking to voters where she’s at.”
BASH: “She just came in and sat down with me and answered my questions for a lot of minutes. A lot of Democrats are questioning your decision, and they’re saying it’s the wrong decision. President Biden’s former 2020 co-chair said, ‘I would debate and I would want the people of Arizona to know what my platform is.’ If you think she is as dangerous to democracy as you say she is, isn’t it your responsibility as a candidate who wants to run Arizona to explain and to show who their alternative is?”
HOBBS: “That is exactly what I’m doing right now. And there is a lot more ability to have a conversation with you without her interruptions and shouting to do that. And yes, she did sit down with you. She’s refused to do that with any legitimate reporter in the state of Arizona and take her case directly to the voters. She’s only interested in creating a spectacle, and I guarantee you that people that are struggling in Arizona right now are not making their decisions over whether or not there was a debate between myself and Kari Lake.”
Joe Biden won his race in a similar fashion in 2020. He too managed to avoid one debate and move the debates to later in the cycle after early voting had begun.
More on Katie Hobbs from Yahoo news: katie-hobbs-bent-the-truth
A million or more voted to allow Hobbs to get away with not confronting voters on a debate stage. Hobbs won’t even talk with a Project Veritas reporter. Her own campaign officials speak candidly about Hobbs own lack of candor as well.
Questions
How can the Democrat Hobbs avoid questions and avoid debates in a state with more registered Republicans than Democrats, and still defeat an absolutely stellar candidate like Lake?
How is it that Hobbs, who is the current Secretary of State, refused to recuse herself from overseeing this year’s election despite calls from the former Secretary of State and Lake?
Republicans in 2020 out-voted Democrats on election day by more than 34% in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest and the source of nearly two-thirds of all votes in 2022. Hobbs surely knew this. Did she also know that sixty precincts, more than 20%, in Maricopa would stop voting for a couple of hours election morning? Many ran out of ink first thing in the morning. Is this incompetence or is this planned? Should Hobbs be asked to account for it?
https://news.yahoo.com/arizona-polls-open-assurances-safety-130132580.html
How many voters, which on election day have typically been Republican, didn’t vote that day? Which party did that help more?
Arizona, like California took, an extended period of time to count votes. The Senate and Governor races were not declared until five days after the election, not because the races were close but because counting was painstakingly slow. When voting goes on for days who is watching the counters? Who is ensuring this is done properly?
The Republican state treasurer candidate received 100,000 more votes than Hobbs and 120,000 more than Lake. How is it that nearly 10% of those who voted for the Republican Treasurer didn’t also vote for Republican Lake? I don’t know what’s going on, but this result is not be believed.
In Houston
Michael Berry on his podcast today talked about the subtlety of how votes are suppressed in Houston (Harris County, Texas). Several election officials called in to his show to explain how the cheat can work, how it can be made harder to vote in certain precincts but not in others. It is a similar story to what we heard in Arizona. Gum up the works, discourage voters who do not have time to wait, and reap the benefits when votes are counted later.
The Texas Governor, Lt. Governor, and AG have yet to weigh in. When there are no consequences, the corruption will continue.
More Questions
There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions about results. If the process actually has problems and those of us asking questions are squashed, how is the process to be fixed? The voting process has changed significantly in the last few years. New paradigms alone introduce unforeseen problems. It never before took an entire week to count votes. People used to vote on a single day and votes were tallied the same day. Who is counting the votes these days and who is watching them count for that entire period?
In years past, we also attempted to validate who was voting, but today such measures are inaccurately labeled “voter suppression”. We used to believe that only citizens who were eligible should vote. We do want to suppress votes that are not legitimate. Drop boxes, extended early voting, votes coming from who knows where all changes that we are supposed to accept as making voting “more accessible”. It has never been hard to vote, but many pretend the increased ease of voting has actually made things better–only because it gives them an advantage.
2000 Mules is a 2022 American political movie directed by Dinesh D’Souza that makes the claim that throughout the 2020 presidential election, unidentified charitable organizations rewarded Democrat-aligned mules to unlawfully gather and save ballots into collection boxes. They were asked to do it in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. If you want to know Where to Watch 2000 Mules, go through the streaming platforms below.
Early voting seemed a good thing initially, but now it goes on interminably. Pennsylvania had 50 days of early voting. By the time of the first (and only) 2022 senatorial debate, one million votes had been cast. Did all those voters realize how bad the condition of John Fetterman was before they voted? This strategy worked for Hobbs and Biden as well. I thought transparency mattered to these folks.
Why can’t early voting be a shorter period, so we get an actual snapshot of the vote?
Why is it as early voting, and mail-in balloting especially, increases, ballot checking measures, like signature validations and chain of custody rules have been relaxed?
Why can’t more people come to the polls to vote, so we can have tighter controls over mail-in voting, a process which can easily be corrupted if strict controls for identifying voters are abandoned?
You should need a good reason to not vote in person. Exceptions are okay, but not without a legitimate excuse.
https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/deep-dive-absentee-ballot-rejection-2020-general-election
the overall total of mail ballots cast went from 28.8 million in 2016 to 66.4 million in 2020, a whopping 131 percent increase.
In this exploration, we see that absentee/mail-ballot rejection rates dropped significantly in 2020 compared to 2016, dropping the most in states that had previously erected high barriers to the use of mail ballots.
Why were there so many problems in same-day voting in Houston and Maricopa County just to mention a few? In Nevada, we watched the Republican’s lead disappear as counting continued for several days, just as happened to President Trump in Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in 2020. As counting continues for days, Republicans often seem to lose. Why is that?
Why don’t more notice when officials gum up the works in certain precincts but not others? Can we call this what it is: corruption?
Who is charged with holding these officials to account? The media is supposed to, but they are also freely placing the “election denier” label on people they don’t like. What do they know? Many fear being labeled an election denier, yet speaking up about wrongdoing is a civil duty. State legislatures also have responsibility for elections, but they may not act if they perceive the system benefits them. The rules can be broken if nobody holds cheaters to account.
California has actually legalized the corrupt process known as “ballot harvesting”. Round up votes in nursing homes and immigrant communities who may not know our processes. Pay people to vote the way you want them when nobody else is looking. Harvesters can drop off votes they approve of while discarding votes they don’t like. Who is to stop them? Can California ever be wrenched from Democrats with such a corrupt system?
As far back as 2005, former President Carter and Secretary of State James Baker headed a bi-partisan commission to warn of this:
2005-carter-baker-report-could-have-averted-problems-in-2020-election
They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting; to halt ballot harvesting; to maintain voter lists, in part to ensure dead people are promptly removed from them; to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly.
The change is out in the open, but unless there are legal challenges or people fired, the perpetrators don’t care if you notice, and if you do voice concerns, you are labeled an “election denier”, a new pejorative. If you are cheating, this is exactly what you want so you can continue to act with impunity. If you are not cheating, then you shouldn’t take such offense at defending the system you advocated for and developed.
There is nothing wrong or corrupt about asking questions and demanding answers about processes that seem suspect. People who get away with this are counting on others to attack the truth-seekers.
Get involved in your local community to clean up and expose this. Tell them to stop telling us there are no issues here. This must be investigated. This must stop. This must be exposed.
Update On Arizona (Late Addition)
Since the original post, one county in Arizona refused to certify the gubernatorial election.
republicans-in-ariz-county-refuse-to-certify-2022-election
Another representative in Arizona’s Mohave county made the extraordinary claim that he was voting to certify under duress because he was threatened with arrest if he did not certify. I would expect a bit more courage from someone in his position, but nonetheless, it is a remarkable statement if true.
Kari Lake is also fighting the results in court, as she should.
Kari Lake files lawsuit in Maricopa County, alleging election laws were broken – CBS News
We must end corruption of our elections. We can create all kinds of laws to prevent cheating, but if our justice system is not willing to enforce the laws (because it benefits their political cronies) and if people are not paying attention to what is going on, the problem will continue–and will likely get worse. We must expose, criticize, and shame those who engage and those who tolerate these practices. Good for the one county in Arizona who demands more before certifying. We need more like those people. This can be ended, but only if more people engage and do the right thing.
Seek the Truth 
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