Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Thanks for the introduction to Ed McBroom. Evidently an honest politician. A Republican at that. One lengthy excerpt from yours:

"Not everyone in Lansing knew what to make of McBroom and his investigation. Some Democrats saw a Trump-supporting, anti-abortion zealot from a deep-red district where failure to wave the “Stop the Steal” flag might be fatal. Some Republicans saw an unfailingly earnest, devoutly religious man who was offended by the president’s antics and wouldn’t hesitate to wield a righteous hammer against his own party. As the committee got to work, and concerns piled up across the ideological spectrum, one person never doubted where McBroom’s conclusion was headed. “He is a good and honest person,” said Aaron Van Langevelde, a longtime friend of McBroom and the former GOP canvassing official who received death threats after voting to certify Biden’s statewide victory. “[He] is always going to put his service to the people above politics.”

When he began investigating Detroit’s late-night dump of absentee votes—ballots that are uniquely numbered and require signature verification—McBroom said his mental cinema played scenes from The Italian Job. “You know, someone climbs up into the truck through a manhole cover underneath, puts new boxes in, takes old boxes out,” he said. “And so, you ask yourself, Is that even possible?”

He continued: “Okay, sure. Somebody could break into the truck, whether it’s through the manhole cover, or the driver's complicit, or whatever. But then what? What are you switching the ballots with? Is somebody going to go to find thousands of ballots, match the numbers and signatures on all of them, then swap them out, all in a very limited amount of time, just to push Trump down to 10 percent, instead of 12 percent? … As I ran through all the possible calculations, I was able to reassure myself, like, This is not how you would steal an election.”

In his report, McBroom made clear that other conclusions were even simpler to reach.

What about dead voters? The committee reviewed a list of 200 deceased Wayne County residents who allegedly voted from the grave; it found two instances in which ballots were cast under those names, and both cases were clerical errors. (One man mistakenly voted under the identity of a dead relative who had the same name; one woman returned her absentee ballot, then died four days before the election.)

What about jurisdictions with more votes than registered voters? There were none to be found.

Julian Sanchez: Trump is looking for fraud in all the wrong places
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trump-looking-fraud-all-wrong-places/617366/

What about absentee ballots being counted multiple times? Nope—the poll books would have registered a disparity. (It’s not uncommon for poll books to be out of balance by a handful of votes; anything more would invite scrutiny and a recount that would invalidate ballots counted twice.)

What about tabulators being hacked with vote-switching software? Impossible, the report found, because the tabulators, no matter what Mike Lindell claims, were not connected to the internet to begin with.

While McBroom’s report crackled with annoyance at certain far-flung beliefs, he saved his saltiest language for the Antrim County saga. To recap: On the morning after Election Day, with all 16,044 votes in the county tallied, an unofficial count showed Biden leading Trump by 3,200 votes. The county clerk quickly determined that an inputting error was publishing the candidates’ totals in the wrong database fields; then, in the race to correct that mistake, officials made an additional inputting error. All of this was resolved within 24 hours, and the county’s updated totals reflected exactly what the tabulators had counted—a 3,800 vote lead for Trump. But this net swing of some 7,000 votes, and the underlying confusion about computer inputs, spawned a nationwide campaign to uncover codes in Dominion voting machines, like the ones used in Antrim County, that changed Trump votes to Biden votes.

The only problem? Dominion’s tabulators had counted the vote accurately, as confirmed by subsequent canvassing efforts and a hand recount. Human inputting error was responsible for the initial bad numbers, a fact obvious to everyone except those who stood to benefit from pretending otherwise. “All compelling theories that sprang forth from the rumors surrounding Antrim County are diminished so significantly as for it to be a complete waste of time to consider them further,” McBroom wrote in the report. “The Committee finds [that] those promoting Antrim County as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election place all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility.”

He didn’t stop there. Galvanized by the shameless grifting he’d encountered during the course of his investigation, McBroom stunned his GOP colleagues by referring to Michigan’s attorney general for possible prosecution “those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”

This represented the one plot twist in McBroom’s report. (Some Democrats expressed surprise at McBroom’s recommending enhanced election-security policies, but most of his proposals are not new, and he has distanced himself from some of his party’s more restrictive new measures.) Concluding that the election wasn’t stolen is one thing. Suggesting that certain people who alleged a stolen election ought to be prosecuted—by a progressive attorney general who is loathed by the conservative base—is another thing entirely.

McBroom is aware of the risks. He will be accused of trying to silence conservatives, of censoring his own constituents, of punishing anyone who dares to question the legitimacy of the Biden administration and the U.S. elections system. But he makes no apologies. “Fraud is fraud,” he shrugged. “If they lied to people to make money off people, that’s a crime.”

I asked McBroom whether, under that standard, Trump—whose affiliated entities raised enormous sums of money under the guise of a legal strategy to overturn the election results—might be vulnerable to prosecution. He laughed nervously. “We didn’t investigate Trump. The report didn’t investigate him. So I have to stick to what the report says.”"

Your link - "The Senator Who Decided to Tell the Truth"
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/michigan-republican-truth-election-fraud/619326/

That's one politician who, i'm guessing, won't be at all sorry when Michigan's term limit catches up to him.