Advisory Opinions - Swinging for the Fences

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

The Trump campaign is swinging for the fences in most of its litigation efforts in hopes that at least some of its legal arguments will be successful. But as our podcast hosts remind us, most of the president’s post-election lawsuits are unlikely to change the outcome even if the Trump campaign scores a few victories along the way. “The Trump administration could win, dunk on the opposition, hang on the rim, taunt its opponents, and nothing changes,” David explains. On today’s podcast, David and Sarah explain the overall legal context surrounding the president’s ongoing election litigation efforts and give us the lowdown on the latest voter fraud conspiracy theories. Plus, David and Sarah break down Supreme Court oral arguments for the Affordable Care Act case and discuss a race-based admissions lawsuit at Harvard. Show Notes: -“Fact Check: Debunking the Hammer and Scorecard Conspiracy Theory” by Khaya Himmelman in The Dispatch. -“Fact Check: Explaining the False Allegations About Dominion Voting Systems” by Alec Dent in The Dispatch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Offer ends June 30th, 2024. New eligible clients only. Complete criteria by August 30th, 2024. New eligible clients only. Complete criteria by August 30th, 2024. Visit rbc.com slash student 100. Imagine yourself in Ottawa, surrounded by thousands of vibrant tulips. Oh. And discovering your new favorite microbrewery. Ah.

Before cycling along scenic bike paths. Oh. And wandering through a museum in awe. Ah. Adventure awaits in Ottawa from O to A. Plan your getaway at ottawatourism.ca. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to what promises to be a spicy and wide-ranging advisory opinions podcast today.

I'm David French with Sarah Isger. We are from The Dispatch, thedispatch.com. Sarah Isger. We are from The Dispatch, thedispatch.com. And Sarah, we're going to cover a ton. We're going to cover election lawsuits. We're going to go state by state. And trust me, y'all, we're not going to go into every single one of these cases because what you have in general is a pattern, a similar pattern holding, which is there are a lot of sort of what you would call penny-ante lawsuits, like lawsuits that can't possibly make a difference, and one or two where the Trump campaign is swinging for the fences. And so we'll go through those. We're also going to go through some pretty wild developments of viral claims of vote fraud, including one that's just, you got to just stay tuned.

Just stay tuned. It's called Hammer and Scorecard. And that's all I'm going to say right now. But it is everywhere. It is everywhere. We're also going to talk a little bit about the Obamacare case. And Sarah, we're going to tease something else, right?

Yeah. So just now, the First Circuit issued its long-expected ruling in favor of Harvard's race-conscious admissions policy. This clears the way, frankly, for the case to go to the Supreme Court now is the main reason that this is interesting. The First Circuit opinion is both not surprising and, you know, all of these race-based admissions cases basically have to be taken entirely on their own because if you were to apply the same disparate impact theory to housing, to voting, to anything else, we have totally different jurisprudence. So on Monday, you and I will dive into race-based admissions cases. We'll go back a little bit to Fisher and some of the Grutter and Gratz fun. And we will look at this First Circuit case,

which will go up on CERT here shortly. That will be exciting. No, really, it will be exciting because this is something that has been percolating for a really long time. And, you know, the Harvard case is in many ways a case that, because it's statutory, it's involving federal statutes because Harvard is a private university. This is something that can impact every single university receiving federal funds in the United States, as well as these other doctrines that you just mentioned. So, yeah, Monday is going to be lit, as you kids say. And if you remember, it's one of those cases where the Gorsuch opinion in Bostock can have some teasing out effect. It's also a case where I just think adding justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch since the last time they did one of these cases in Fisher has maybe more than any other breed of cases has a real effect on the court.

No, I think that's right. That's right. And actually, I did this, you know, remember I did this analysis on the effect of justice Barrett, and we did a podcast on the effect of justice Barrett on the court, and we did not talk about this category of cases. No, because they're sort of narrow in a sense, even though they have broad implications society wide. But it's always this exact question. It's race based admissions and higher education. And and they keep coming every five, 10 years or so. And it's back.

So but we do have one other Supreme Court case to talk about. The Affordable Care Act case was argued, David, this week. Yes. And it was a long argument. It was an interesting argument unless you'd followed the case at all, in which case it was exactly as you think it went. Yeah, exactly. This is one of those things where it's an important case that really, if we spend more than five minutes talking about it right now, it's almost a waste of time. Because did we not tell y'all listeners that there's not a majority on the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act? At most, at most, there is a majority to invalidate the individual mandate. That's the mandate to purchase insurance, which has already been gutted. It's a mandate without a penalty.

So is a mandate without a penalty a mandate? That was actually one of the questions that was sort of batted around in the oral argument. But it looks like at most, the Supreme Court will strike down the mandate and leave everything else intact and quite possibly might just boot the case entirely because the plaintiffs who challenged the Affordable Care Act don't have standing, which could be an important ruling all on its own, Sarah. The standing question is important no matter what. Now, not so much the individual standing, because that's just a question of whether individuals who are buying health insurance because they say there is a mandate on the books,

even though there's no penalty, whether that's a real cognizable injury, not that interesting to me. The state standing, however, no matter what they decide, if the states have standing, if the states don't have standing, that has big implications, especially just for the Biden administration. Because if the states have standing, what that means is that in a large, complex regulatory law, states just need to find one aspect that they have standing, an injury from, that they have to spend money or something else.

And they can challenge a totally separate part of the law as invalid. On the flip side, if they don't have standing, it means that states have to have particularized standing on every part they want to challenge, even if, for instance, there isn't a great severability argument so that the whole law would fall for instance, there isn't a great severability argument so that the whole law would fall regardless of which part of it they are challenging. So messy, interesting standing stuff on the state front. I thought the California Solicitor General, who was arguing mostly on the state standing question, had a really interesting argument demeanor. I haven't really seen someone else with his argument style. And you know what? I liked it. So if you're just interested in hearing different types of Supreme Court arguments,

he was the first hour. And I think that if you're a law student listening to this, for instance, it's worth just going, tuning in for 20 minutes of that because I sort of put arguments into two buckets. But now I'm creating a like sub-part bucket or maybe even a third bucket. My two buckets generally are- Wait, wait, if you have a sub-part bucket, would you just more accurately call that like a cup? Yeah, maybe a cup in the bucket.

A cup in the bucket. Yeah, okay. So there's the advocate style where you go in and say, here's what the law is. It's, you know, press secretary, it's, um, spin all of that. And it can be very effective when done well, when you are a persuasive advocate and then there's the explainer style. Um, John Roberts, Paul Clement, those are sort of good

explainer, uh, people to hold up as exemplars. Um, and this is where you go in and you don't sound like you're advocating for your side. You're just here to explain the facts. And if you understand the facts, you of course come out on my side, but that's beside the point. I'm just here to explain the lay of the land to you, to answer your questions the most forthright way possible because I am so blissfully sure of my position that it is the only outcome once you just understand the facts and the history. So that's, I think, more effective. Personally, I enjoy that argument style. It is generally my style on the press side of things as well when it works. Sometimes you're just like, nope, I don't have the facts, so I'm just going to bang the table. But this guy, the California Solicitor General, his was like full concession. Like, well, that may be true.

Yeah, no, you have a great point. but, and then, and then like does this explainer thing, basically he's there to argue against this state standing, which is interesting because he represents a state. So there's sort of this interesting conflict that the justices did point out. And so he kept saying like, well, yeah, maybe, maybe they do have standing, but look on the merits, even so we win. If you decided here, we win. If you decided there, we win here and there a little bit here. Like we went everywhere. It was like a Dr. Seuss novel. And, um, he may have gone a little further on conceding every time he was asked a question, but it was super interesting. I haven't heard another advocate do it as well as he did.

And sound is like prepared and confident still. So that part was interesting to me. And then on the mandate, you know, we, the justices basically were deciding whether it was inoperative, meaning there's no remedy needed here or whether they were going to invalidate just the mandate. The results for you, John Q. Public, are identical, whether it's inoperative or invalidated. And I, David, did not hear a single vote for striking down the law as a whole. We may end up with a weird concurrence on how we need to revisit severability doctrine, but I'm not sure we're even going to get a dissent that says we should have invalidated the whole law. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you completely. Now,

here's the question, Sarah. What do you think was my oral argument style in your buckets? Oh, I think you were an explainer. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was the whole strategy. Yeah, I mean... I wanted to be the one who got up and sort of like, all right, you've heard from the advocate. Now you're going to hear from the expert. Yeah. When done well and when you really are the master of the facts, it's incredibly effective. And I think it, you know, on like fantasy football or whatever, like your max score is much higher if you can do it well. The problem is if you don't do it well, your max score on the advocacy thing may start out lower, but you probably have a

better chance of hitting that max score. Well, and also the thing, if you're going to take the explainer approach, you better know it. I mean, you better... Every single bit. You better have that record on instant recall. You better have line by line of opposing depositions on instant recall. I mean, that is a prep monster. Because if you don't do it, if you don't pull it off, you look like an idiot. But you also lose all credibility. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, that's why, I mean, prepping for oral argument,

you know, for the 30 minutes or 45 minutes you'd end up having in front of a circuit court panel, you know, I would spend far more time doing that than I would do writing. I would actually even spend writing some of the briefs that I worked on because you just have to have absolute mastery and command of everything. But actually kind of fun to remember those days, Sarah. Although I got to say, of all of the things I did in the practice of law, the one that I was the most nervous about that before I did was closing arguments in front of a jury. That is what, that's what made me most nervous.

Being judged by your fellow man. Yeah, I feel that. A jury of my peers looking at you impassively as you're just pouring your heart out in front of them. And yeah. Looking at you impassively as you're just pouring your heart out in front of them. And yeah, the you know, the last thing on the oral argument that I'll mention is Justice Kavanaugh made what amounted to, in my view, a little sideswipe at the chief. Because this whole case, by the way, is one giant. We don't curse on this podcast. What do I one giant middle finger to the chief?

What do I one giant middle finger to the chief? Because, of course, back in Sibelius, he is the one who sort of found this pretzel like way to say that actually the mandate stands because it's a tax. So then Congress zeroed out the tax and the state plaintiffs in this case were, you know, there is no penalty for the mandate. They know that it's going to get severed, but you know what? They really want the chief to have to say it. It's not a tax now, is it, sir? It never was a tax. And so you had Justice Kavanaugh during the argument ask one of the advocates, so couldn't this have just been invalidated and severed back in 2012? And you had Don Verrilli, of course, the advocate in 2012, have to say in 180 degrees from his argument that day. Yes, it could have. And the chief said, so this is just a bait and switch, right?

You told me that the whole law would fall if we invalidated the mandate in 2012. And now you're saying that, in fact, legally, the whole law absolutely will not fall. And that's why it's severable. So you're making exactly the opposite argument. And of course, it's the chief acknowledging that the only reason he found the whole tax thing was because he didn't want to invalidate the whole law, but there was no severability argument back in 2012. And now, in order to keep the law standing, they have to argue that the mandate is nothing. It doesn't matter at all to the law. Meaningless. And so you just like, obviously we

could not see the chief. These were all audio arguments, but his hands were on his temples, just rubbing them with the same guy, Don Verrilli, standing up there with no sense of irony that the guy who told him that the whole law would fall without the mandate now was saying, who told him that the whole law would fall without the mandate now was saying it is absurd to think that this whole law should fall without the mandate. Obviously the mandate is entirely severable. I mean, if you're the chief, like I just would have thrown something against. Just one quick comment before we move on to the election stuff. I remember, I mean, the mandate was the key to public anger about Obamacare. That was, in the conservative world, the key to public anger about Obamacare. This was, the government is telling me to purchase this product, and as it's doing so, it's so expensive, and they're making it more. It was the key to public anger. And it is remarkable the extent to which as time has gone by that the mandate has become one of the less important aspects of Obamacare. That the Medicaid expansion and the pre-existing conditions requirements, coverage requirements, that's become the core of the whole thing. And the mandate has really just been kind of a footnote. Which was Verley's argument. He said, look,

chief, I made the argument in good faith. Congress definitely thought at the time that you needed both carrots and sticks to keep this healthcare law afloat by getting new people in the market. Congress has learned a lot more since then and now realizes that the carrots were enough and you didn't need the stick of the penalty and the mandate. And the chief was like, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Great. Great. Thanks, Don. Thanks, Don. All right. Are you ready, Sarah? Thanks, Don. Thanks, Don. All right. Are you ready, Sarah? Also, by the way, just super, I mean, so Don really was the representative, the advocate for the U.S. House of Representatives in this case. And like, really? You hired the same guy? On the one hand, baller move. On the other hand, seriously? I mean, that's just a strategically interesting choice that you wanted the same guy to be up there saying, yeah, no, I'm the guy who told you it was absolutely necessary.

And now I'm the guy telling you it is absolutely not necessary. And I have so much credibility that you're going to believe me both times. And in this case, they will. But I just overall whether uh congress has lost some credibility with chief justice roberts over this yeah that that's an interesting question that's an interesting question i think you're gonna get a very annoyed and maybe the most annoyed that we've seen in a long time opinion from the chief on this because it's, it has embarrassed him personally. If the chief is over the Trump administration, it's over Congress. He loves the courts.

Yeah, he does defend the courts. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, the Act In Line podcast. Act In Line is the flagship podcast of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, dedicated to the promotion of a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. With episodes released every Wednesday, Acton Line brings together writers, economists, religious leaders, thinkers, journalists, newsmakers, and more in conversations that bridge the gap between good intentions and sound economics. By demonstrating the compatibility of faith, liberty, and free markets, conversations on Acton Line reveal how

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is pending. The most recent statistics that I have seen that are that there have been 22 cases filed post-election in five states. Right now, to the extent that decisions have been made in these cases, the Trump team is, I believe, 0 for 12 right now. But what we're going to do is we're going to go through the key states, and we're going to tell you what are the cases that actually matter. Because a lot of these are very penny-anny cases. They're not going to matter at all. They've been filed over. For example, there was a Sharpie. As in, even winning the case does not change the vote outcome in any substantial margin. Exactly. Yeah. The Trump administration could win, dunk on the opposition, hang on the rim, taunt its opponents, and nothing changes.

Nothing changes. about this election and this election litigation, and they use these three words in sequence, Bush versus Gore, then what they're actually saying at the top of their lungs is either, I don't know what I'm talking about, or I am actively deceiving you. Okay, there is not a Bush v. Gore litigation situation in this election, period. Okay, in Bush v. Gore, you had discrete litigation that was involving a single state that was not just within the margin of error, but vote counting for a whole state of sometimes less than a thousand vote gap. And that a swing in that one state as a result of litigation that the litigation wasn't asking for the swing. The litigation was asking for a series of recounts.

A swing in one state could swing the whole election. Here, the Trump campaign could invalidate all of the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, which it's not going to be able to do. And the outcome doesn't change. It could stop certification in Michigan and invalidate all of the votes of Pennsylvania. And you're going to, you know, when you begin to get in, you have to have domino fall after domino fall after domino fall. And the gaps, the margins are large

by comparison to Bush v. Gore. Very large, over 50,000 in Pennsylvania. All right, Sarah, let's start. Let's go through the big states. I'm excited. All right, here we go. Pennsylvania, okay. Pennsylvania has a. All right, here we go. Pennsylvania. Okay. Pennsylvania has a... This is a linchpin because Pennsylvania isn't... It is necessary,

but not sufficient. He would have to turn Pennsylvania and other states, but there really is no way to do any of this if he can't turn Pennsylvania. So at minimum, you start and live or die in Pennsylvania. Right, exactly. So Pennsylvania is the state that it's got to be a domino that falls. Other dominoes would have to fall, but it's got to be a domino that would fall. So what you have in Pennsylvania is you have multiple active cases that are requesting, for example, canvas of absentee and mail-in ballots in the Philadelphia County Board of Elections. That is not, this is something, if you're asking for a canvas, historically, canvases have not changed outcomes really at all. changed outcomes really at all. We are talking about appealing, for example, a Bucks County Board of Elections decision to count certain ballots that the GOP believes to be deficient. Very, very penny ante. A Pennsylvania case involving a lawsuit filed by Northampton

County Republican Committee attempting to stop the County board of elections from disclosing identity of canceled ballots. Meaningless. Meaningless. What is meaningful? What is meaningful? There is one case in Pennsylvania that is meaningful. It has been filed in a federal court, United States District Court from the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and this is Donald Trump, United States District Court from the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and this is Donald Trump, the Trump campaign, Donald Trump for president, filed against the Secretary of State. And it is seeking a order, and I'm going to read exactly what it is seeking so that we do not get this confused. An order, declaration, and or injunction that prohibits the County Board of Elections at issue and the Secretary of State from certifying the results of the 2020 general election in Pennsylvania on a Commonwealth-wide basis. In other words,

you cannot certify Pennsylvania. Or in the alternative, an order that prohibits defendants from certifying the results of the general elections, which include the tabulation of absentee and mail-in ballots for which plaintiffs' watchers were prevented from observing during the pre-canvas and canvas in the county boards, or in the alternative, an order prohibiting defendant from certifying the results of the general election, which include the tabulation of absentee and mail-in ballots, which defendants improperly permitted to be cured. Okay. This is the big one. This is the swing for the fences case, Sarah. And what's at issue here are allegations that the mail-in ballots constitute an equal protection violation because

the ID and ballot security measures for mail-in ballots are different from in-person ballots. An allegation that there is, that poll watchers were not, count count watchers were not allowed close enough to observe the tabulation of the votes and also an allegation that there was a um insufficient that some counties permitted voters to cure problems with their absentee mail-in ballots and other counties did not that's the fundamental core here of the claims. And so, Sarah, this is the swing for the fences case. What are your initial thoughts? All three of them will certainly lose on their remedy. Yeah. There is no world in which the remedy for any of those violations is to stop the state from certifying the vote. So let's take these one at a time. On the first one, the equal protection claim,

we've known the difference between mail-in ballots and in-person voting. So only suing afterwards, I think, somewhat undermines your argument that this is a real problem that you have. There's been no similar case filed throughout the country, despite doing mail versus in-person voting now for quite some time. And the idea is that in person, you're held to a higher standard than by mail. And I think the court will simply say, no, it's not higher. It's maybe a little different in its execution and that that's just fine. States can sort of do these elections the way they want. And there is no, certainly no equal protection violation or else, look, if they find that there were an equal protection violation, then like everything's an equal protection violation when

it comes to voting. Different machines could be an equal protection violation, then like everything's an equal protection violation when it comes to voting. Different machines could be an equal protection violation. Different, you know, counties having different check-in processes for registration or different states having different processes from other states, I think would be the biggest one. You know, if mail versus in-person is equal protection, certainly the difference between how I vote in Texas and how you vote in Tennessee would then be an equal protection because it will be different. I don't think that one of them is particularly harder or heightened than the other, but they are different. And look, the court's just not going to find that because it is up to the states how they want to conduct their elections. You know, when I was interviewing Governor Hogan during our What's Next event,

I asked him whether he'd support some federal uniformity in elections, especially in terms of when absentee ballots can be counted and when they can be accepted based on their postmark. And even he was like, you know, this is a governor of a state who wants to protect state power. But even he was like, you know, there could a governor of a state who wants to protect state power. But even he was like, um, you know, there could be some things that states would agree to that this, this maybe highlighted some problems. Um, but this ain't going to be one of them, the difference between mail and in person. Okay. So that's number one. So that's a losing argument, uh, entirely number two, the idea that your observers weren't allowed close enough, they're in the room, but they can't see the ballots when they're being separated

from their envelopes. On the one hand, not being allowed close enough, I think is the same as not allowing them in the room to a legal point, right? If you had them 100 feet away and then said, look, they're in the room, ha ha ha, and they can't see, then they're functionally not in the room. But here's the problem. We do have a good faith presumption that the, you know, legally speaking, that the folks opening the ballots and separating them from their envelopes were not committing fraud. So it is on the Trump campaign to show that this had any injury. Right. They can go through the envelopes and show which envelopes should not have been accepted. I have yet to see them argue that. I've yet to see them argue how many ballots would have been affected.

And because of that, while they may win that in the sense that, yes, their guys should have been allowed closer, the remedy is nothing until they can show problems. And the problems, they'd have to show enough ballots. In this case, what? It's a 50,000 vote difference. So they'll need to find 26,000 ballots or so, 25,001 ballots that should not have been accepted. No, actually, they'll have to show all 50,000 ballots that shouldn't have been accepted. No, actually, they'll have to show all 50,000 ballots that shouldn't have been accepted because if they're not accepted, it's not just that it flips the vote from Biden to Trump.

It's that they actually need to take away votes from Biden. So yeah, they're gonna have to find 50,000 envelopes that shouldn't have been accepted. That means that they don't have a signature, that there was no security envelope, things like that. I just don't think they were kept far enough away from seeing these ballots long enough to have a 50,000 vote difference. And this is also something that was a subject of prior litigation while the count was going on.

Yes, it was. So this is where you had that famous exchange with a federal district court judge where the Trump lawyer says there were a non-zero number of observers. And then the judge says, okay, wait, as a member of the bar, you have to tell me, did you have observers there? Yes. Then essentially the city or the state officials in the Trump campaign got together and agreed to an arrangement and then proceeded thereafter with an agreed upon arrangement for counting and observing. So this is something, although not applicable in every location covered by this lawsuit, I mean, this is something that's also been subject to prior litigation.

And then the last things here are the cure, the cure provisions. This is something where essentially what happened is, as I said earlier, the secretary, there was guidance given from the secretary of state's office permitting cure procedures. If someone had turned in an absentee ballot that was obviously deficient, could they be given

an opportunity to cure it, to make it, uh, to make it proper so that their vote would count and some counties or to be notified that their ballot had not been accepted and they needed to go vote in person if they wanted to have a vote count. Right, exactly. So some counties did this and some counties did not. And the argument here, now, this is where the argument is that, therefore, this happened, this was an equal protection violation, and therefore you cannot certify the results of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. This is what I talk about when I talk about swinging for the fences. So, Sarah, your thoughts?

when I talk about swinging for the fences. So, Sarah, your thoughts. I think it would be a real problem if some counties had regulations that allowed them to do it and other counties did not. Right. I don't think that the remedy would be invalidating the election,

but I actually think they would have a chance, a plaintiff in that case, would have a good chance of winning the case. Because statewide, everyone was allowed to do this, but some counties presumably just chose not to, didn't have the resources, didn't feel like it. And other counties did. You know, I don't see I don't see the problem there. I don't like it, actually, just as a voter, but I don't see a legal deficiency. Well, I think there's also a difference between if I'm a voter and I was not given an opportunity

to cure, for example, and my vote did not count and I intended to cast a vote and another similarly situated voter in another county was given an opportunity to cure, you do have a problem there. The issue there is not, is there a problem? The issue is, what is the remedy for that problem? And this is where the lawsuit reaches so far. It's to say, okay, there's no showing that the number of voters presented with the cure-no-cure option are anywhere close to sufficient to overturn the results of this election. But yet they're still saying you can't certify the results of the election, that we're asking to stop from certifying the results of the election. This is where-

Well, this is maybe where, David, we need to separate out like we're treating this as if it's a real and legitimate court case when and you know trying to treat their legal arguments in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs when in fact the court case the arguments they don't really care about it's all about trying to get to this remedy. And the remedy is absurd. Yeah. And therefore, perhaps, we should be a little clearer that the legal arguments,

while maybe they could be interesting in some other context, because they're sort of slapdash thrown together in order to just get to this remedy that is absurd, therefore, the legal arguments are absurd as well. Well, I was trying to think of an analogy. Let's imagine that I'm hammering a nail. And because of a defect in the hammer, the head of the hammer flies off and hits me in the thumb

and breaks my thumb. So I file a product liability lawsuit. All right. That's product liability lawsuit for the compensation for a broken thumb is completely reasonable. But let's say I add as a request for relief in this otherwise reasonable lawsuit that I should become chairman of the board of the corporate of the hammer company. Okay. Right. Then you would say, what on earth are you doing? And then you can't go back up and say, well, the hammer, the head of the hammer did fly off and hit me in the thumb. That did happen. And then, but you would say, why are you asking to be the chairman of the board? And then you keep going. That's right. It would make me wonder whether the hammer really hit you.

It would, it would make me question the credibility of your underlying claim that seems reasonable if taken by itself because the remedy you seek is so stupid. Right. Well put. Shall we continue with this theme and move on to Michigan? Yes. All right. So Michigan. Michigan is, this is a state, again, with quite a few pending, you know, there are quite a few pending lawsuits. They have, to the extent that there have been any decisions in them uh they have failed and it's very important to point out that the margin in michigan is really large 148 000 last time i did the math yeah it's rough it's in the ballpark of 150 000 and as has been the case you've got a lot of penny ante stuff and then you have the the big one. You've got another one of these swing for the

fences cases. And this is the swing for the fence case is Donald Trump for president versus Jocelyn Benson in her capacity as Michigan Secretary of State, Michigan Board of Canvassers, et cetera, et cetera, Western District of Michigan. There's a very similar case filed in state court that is asking for some of the same claims. And this is what they're seeking. An order directing Secretary Benson and the Michigan Board of State Canvassers to not certify the election results until they've been verified and confirmed that all ballots were tabulated and included in the final reported election results until they've been verified and confirmed that all ballots were tabulated and included in the final reported election results and were cast in compliance with the compliance of the provisions of the Michigan election code. And from the Wayne County Board, and Wayne County is the key county here, Board of County Canvassers and State Canvassers from certifying any vote

tallied that includes fraudulent votes, ballots tabulated using the Dominion tabulating equipment or software. Well, here we go, Sarah. Any ballots that were received after election day, any ballots verified or counted where challengers were excluded from the room or denied a meaningful opportunity to observe. Okay, this case is interesting because essentially what is going on in Michigan, it's a very big gap. Wayne County is the key county. So it's a 150,000 vote gap. But to tell you why Wayne County is key county, let me give you some numbers. Wayne County, Biden won 587,000 votes and Trump won 264. So that's the hinge county there. It's a margin of 322,000 votes.

By the way, that's not unusual. In 04, let me ask you a trivia question. Sarah, I've already broadcast the answer, darn it. Who received more votes in Wayne County, Michigan, both as a matter of raw vote total and percentage, John Kerry or Joe Biden? Oh, interesting. I mean, obviously the answer is going to be John Kerry, but given the raw vote total enormity of this election, that actually is surprising. Yeah. John Kerry received 600,000 votes. Joe Biden received 587,000. The margin in 04, putting Kerry over Bush, was 342,000. Whereas in 2020, Biden's margin over Trump was 322. And you actually find this pattern.

And you actually find this pattern. Here's another one. Who received more Democratic votes in Philadelphia County? Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost Pennsylvania? Or Joe Biden in 2020 when he won Pennsylvania? Wow. Wow. Hillary Clinton, huh?

Yeah, exactly. She got Hillary Clinton, huh? enough to raise eyebrows? No, no, they went bigger for losing candidates in the recent past. So how did Joe Biden win? Suburbs, suburbs, Sarah. Yeah, I mean, you look at Pennsylvania and Northampton County, one of the ones that I highlighted in my newsletter, it has, so goes Northampton, so goes the state. In 2016, it went for Donald Trump. In 2020, it went for Joe Biden. So it kept up its tradition, and Northampton is one of those collar county, you know, suburban-y looking counties. And it, you know, it wasn't particularly close.

Exactly. So back to Michigan. So this one, if possible, is worse than the Pennsylvania lawsuit in this sense. 150,000 vote gap. 150,000. Now, what they've done differently in this case than what would happen in Pennsylvania, which Pennsylvania relied primarily on a legal argument more than a factual argument, a legal argument regarding disparate treatment of different kinds of ballots, or been filed along with the case. And these affidavits are from various individuals who say, I heard, say, a poll watcher say this, or I was not permitted close enough here, or another person was not permitted close enough there. So it's kind of a grab bag of individual claims

that in their specific instance, they were not allowed close enough, or in their specific instance, they were not allowed close enough or in their specific case, they were not allowed to see this ballot or that ballot. And it's nothing close enough to block the certification of the election results. Nothing. And it's actually what you're talking about are the kinds of claims that you would re you would run to court to get an injunction in real time, uh, to, to permit you to get a little bit closer if, if it was insufficient. But again, it's the same sort of analogy where it's the hammer of the head of the hammer hits the thumb, and therefore you want to own the company. I mean, this is the kind of classic overreach. And the dominion part isn't just overreach.

That's where it's moving into absolute conspiracy theory. Do you know about dominion, Sarah? Oh, I don't. But you always are so good at telling me about the conspiracy theories that I've missed because I'm not on Facebook. I know my conspiracy theories. Yeah, this one is coming from a person, a woman named Sidney Powell. Do we know who Sidney Powell is? Sidney Powell is famous for being a number of things.

One, she's a member of Trump's legal team right now. Number two, she's General Flynn's lawyer. This is a lawyer he got after he fired his counsel that helped him reach a plea agreement with the Mueller team. She's also, this person, she's very interesting, Sarah. She had a moment in the sun back in 2018 when she went on Lou Dobbs and blamed illegal immigrants for diseases, quote, diseases spreading across the country that are causing polio-like paralysis of our children. And Lou Dobbs was like, no. She was too far for Lou Dobbs,

but not this time. Now she's alleging that there is, that Democrats are stealing the election. And there's a great fact check from the dispatch fact check team saying that Democrats were stealing the election by manipulating something called Dominion vote count systems,

Dominion voting systems of vote counting software. And here's what she says. They had the algorithm. They had the paper ballots waiting to be inserted if needed. And notably, President Trump's vote in the blue states went up enormously, and that's when they had to stop the vote count

and go in and replace votes for Biden and take away Trump votes. Stop the vote count and go in and replace votes for Biden and take away Trump votes. Now, there's no proof offered for this assertion. Is there any basis or is there anything that you can look at to say, well, there for the Dominion conspiracy is that in Antrim County, Michigan, there was an Antrim County inadvertently misreported votes, a number of votes in their unofficial results. And the GOP chairwoman said that was due to a tabulating software that glitched and caused a miscalculation. However, that assessment was contradicted

and the Michigan Secretary of State announced that it was not a software but user human error that led to the reporting, misreporting. There was also some arguments that there was software updates that caused some tabulating machines to crash, but there were no results that were offered. And also some allegations that Dominion is partially owned by the Pelosi family.

That Richard Blum, Senator Feinstein's husband is a significant shareholder of Dominion and again this I would urge you to read our fact check but the bottom line is that the the company in which there is a stock holding avid technology has

nothing to do with Dominion and doesn't produce voting software yeah okay and that's in this complaint minion and doesn't produce voting software. Yeah, okay. And that's in this complaint. That's in this complaint. That's where we are.

Sarah, you're rubbing your eyes. It's a 150,000 vote margin, David. I know. Let's take a minute and thank our sponsor, ExpressVPN. I'm not sure if you've seen the documentary, The Social Dilemma on Netflix. If you haven't, I recommend it.

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slash opinions to learn more. By the way, maybe now is a good time to go down a little jog about recounts. Yes, please. Since 2000, there have been 31 statewide recounts nationwide.

The average recount changed the margins by, do you want to take a guess, David? 381. Pretty close. Um, 381. Pretty close. The average change in those 31 statewide recounts in the last two decades was 430 votes. It changed the outcome in three races. The Washington state governor's race in 2004, the Vermont state auditor's race in 2006. the Vermont state auditors race in 2006. And of course the only one that's actually famous,

the U S Senate race in Minnesota in 2018, where Norm Coleman was ahead by 215 votes. And after the recount, Al Franken won by 225 votes, a swing that was just slightly outside that average recount change. Overall, the shift in the vote for statewide recounts is 0.024%. That is so far smaller by magnitudes. I mean, let's not even talk about Michigan because that's a joke. I think the Michigan thing is a joke, David. Yeah. But it's so much smaller than Georgia, the closest state,

than Nevada, than Arizona, than Wisconsin. It's not close in Pennsylvania. As you said, the margins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan are much larger than Donald Trump won them by in 2016. Wisconsin did do a recount, by the way, in 2016. And Donald Trump's margin went up by, I believe, 150 votes after that statewide recount. And that, by the way, votes after that statewide recount. And that, by the way, sorry, it was 131 votes. That, by the way, is what actually is more likely to happen. In general, after recounts, the winner slightly increases their margin, as Donald Trump did by 131 votes in 2016 in Wisconsin.

So that's all to say that other than these lawsuits, there ain't no hope because this recount isn't going to do anything in these states to actually change the outcome of these. And the Michigan thing, I just like it's 150,000 votes. You know, Pennsylvania's 50,000, which frankly might as well be 150,000 in terms of any lawsuit changing this because you need to show that the number of ballots injured by whatever your problem is would change that outcome. And when we're talking about late arriving absentee ballots, absentee ballots that arrived after election day, something the president has spent a lot of time talking about. They're not part of that 50,000

vote margin, David. There's 10,000 of them. They haven't been added to the margin at all yet. So even if you throw out those ballots, set them on fire, we never even know who they voted for. ballots, set them on fire. We never even know who they voted for. Even if they all went for Donald Trump, it doesn't matter. He would still have a 40,000 vote gap. Well, and there is a Leon Wolf, who is the managing editor of The Blaze. So this is not somebody who would say is part of the corporate media, mainstream legacy media, out-to-get President Trump media. He did the yeoman's work of going through all 234 pages of affidavits, finding some pretty interesting and sloppy stuff in them. But, for example, there would some, there were obviously these people were presented with a Q and a that they provided answers to. And so they actually imported the,

some of the Q and a into the affidavits. Um, and says, were you denied access? No, but my access for meaningful ballot challenging was hindered by social distancing requirements and intimidation throughout the night. But he went through and he did the yeoman's work and he said the TLDR is that the sum total allegations seem to pertain to less than 1,000 ballots even if we accept them as all true. Yeah. Less than 1,000 ballots.

And yet again, the argument is we can't certify this state. Can't certify this state. So these are the- Well, David. Yes. Do you have another state you want to go through or should we go to voter fraud writ large?

There isn't another state with a, there is a hand recount being ordered in Georgia. Fine. Which by the the way i think is interesting because it gets rid of the third way that that the allegation of voter fraud has occurred right there's the allegation of adding ballots there's the allegation of changing ballots and there's the allegation of changing ballots, and there's the allegation of vote hacking. Well, if you do a hand recount and Georgia has a paper ballot receipt thing going, then that gets rid of that third option. And the number of emails that I've gotten of people with theories of how you can hack voting machines, again, you're like, yeah, no, I get that, except that there's a paper ballot receipt.

And like someone emailed, I was like, nobody would ever do a hand recount. And I'm like, first of all, actually it's not that uncommon. And second of all, uh, thank you, Georgia for proving my point. Georgia is now going to go through all of the paper ballots and do it by hand. Um, it's, it's not that uncommon. And there's actually very few states that only do electronic voting. And now none of them are in the states that we're talking about. Georgia actually used to do only electronic

and they moved to paper ballot receipts as well. And I'm sure they're enjoying that fact today. All right, before we get to your general vote fraud, we have to deal with one other conspiracy theory. And I almost hate to bring it up, but it's everywhere now, Sarah. It is everywhere. When you say everywhere, you do mean everywhere on Facebook, right? Because here I am sitting in Virginia, and it's not like there's a billboard flying through the sky behind a plane.

I am getting messages from people saying it's everywhere on the hill. Okay. All right. Tell us about it. Amongst Republican representatives. Okay. Well, that's never been a standard of high intellectual thought.

Sorry. Well, anyway, it is, it is moving through social media and it's moving through the GOP. And it is this, that there is a supercomputer. Any conspiracy theory that begins with there is a supercomputer should already refute itself, but will keep going.

There is a supercomputer with the codename Hammer. And this supercomputer contains a software by the name of Scorecard. And this software by the name of Scorecard can manipulate votes at a very high level of sophistication so that the manipulation is not readily apparent as you're looking at vote totals, but washes its way through the system in such a way that it can change results. so that the manipulation is not readily apparent as you're looking at vote totals, but washes its way through the system in such a way that it can change results. Now, this comes from, Steve Bannon has embraced it, Sidney Powell has talked about it on Fox, Bernie Kerik, George Papadopoulos, John Cardillo, Cardillo, whatever,

Emerald Robinson, and I mean, thatio, whatever, Emerald Robinson. And I mean, that lineup of names right there should discredit it, but it is still flying around. The origin is a guy named Dennis Montgomery. He's a former intelligence contractor. There's a great article about his history in the Daily Beast. He's represented by Larry Klayman. Do we need to go into who Larry Klayman is, Sarah?

I have no idea who that is. Larry Klayman, he is a... I believe he was the founder of Judicial Watch, but has become lately a lawyer sort of for crank right-wing figures. Anyway, and sogomery has this really long and interesting history of making incredibly outlandish claims including claims that have taken in the u.s military and intelligence complex early after 9-11. He claimed to have come up with a software that would help the CIA,

and this is coming from just this great article at the Daily Beast that outlines his history, that he could identify terrorist faces and weapons through drone footage, spot submarines deep underwater, and he got millions of dollars in contracts from the Air Force and Special Operations Command. But the crown jewel is he had a program that claimed could detect messages to Al-Qaeda sleeper cells hidden in broadcasts from Qatar's Al Jazeera network. He got about

$20 million from the government to do this work. And in December of 03, he claimed he discovered information in a TV broadcast proving that Al-Qaeda hijackers were about to hijack planes flying to the US. President Bush blocked the flights, ordered them to turn around or stay on the ground. There was even talk in the administration about potentially shooting down the planes. But the technology was a hoax.

Was a hoax. So anyway, this guy gets all this money, develops this hoax technology, develops also a monumental gambling habit, and then moves around beginning to sort of crank out these very odd conspiracy theories and including one that was designed to

provide proof that Judge Arpaio, I mean Sheriff Arpaio from Arizona, that allegedly helped Arpaio, was supposed to allegedly help Arpaio that was ultimately repudiated by Arpaio. Anyway, this is where the hammer and scorecard is coming from. It's coming from this guy who's a fraud. He's just a fraud. Okay, tell us about hammer and scorecard

because I am now, I don't care. I just did. There's a supercomputer called Hammer created by this guy, Eddie Montgomery, and it's got a software called Scorecard and it manipulates votes. And that's

the conspiracy theory right there. At what level? Not Eddie Montgomery, Dennis Montgomery. You're asking too many questions, Sarah. There is a supercomputer. Has been uploaded on each machine

and then does it, how does that work with the paper ballot receipt? Sarah, scorecard, hammer, hammer. There's a supercomputer. It's called hammer. It has a, it has a software called scorecard. Okay. So what you're telling me is that this is a dumb conspiracy theory because it doesn't stand up to the first question you ask, which is when I bubble in, you know, Donald Trump and put it through the machine. I can even understand

someone saying that basically there's a software a la office space that takes every, you know, hundredth vote for Donald Trump, turns it to a Joe Biden vote so that it's less detectable. But then when you do the hand recount in Georgia, for instance, that would show up because it's your ballot that you bubbled in. It would just be that the machine has software that intentionally counts it wrong. The machine can't change what you bubbled. Well, Sarah, you're about to get your mind blown when Georgia hand recount comes back and you're going to see what Scorecard and Hammer did. Yeah, I guess so. You would also have to do it on each of the types of machines. You would also want to do it in a way that you left, of course, some county machines out of it.

Basically, each county keeps their machines. So you'd have to break into every county or just do it in the counties where Joe Biden was needed to rack up the most votes. But as you said, in the counties that I would have picked, like Wayne County, like Philadelphia County, that's actually not what happened. So instead, they went the harder route and broke into the counties that are smaller population-wise, more suburban. So you'd have to break into more of those counties and change the votes in those counties with this software. But again, hoping that there's no hand recount. Okay.

That's why Hammer, Sarah, puts the super in supercomputer. Because it defies logic? It creates its own logic. Uh-huh. It's like Skynet. Yeah, it actually does sound a lot like Skynet. Yeah. No, I mean, look, when you hear some

of these things, and you're not fully in the tank, one of the things for, you know, and believing that there is a conspiracy that had to, that absolutely had to change the results of the election. Um, these dominion and hammer and scorecard theories have an allure to them in a

public that one just doesn't understand technology mainly, doesn't understand the voting system and the system of counting votes in the way that you do, distrusts technology, distrusts big tech. And because the conspiracy theory rests on systems that nobody understands. They become almost impossible to debunk because you're not working from sort of a common set of facts and a common understanding. And so what ends up happening is they go back to your position on the church of voter fraud.

They fit perfectly within this notion that there has to be something wrong. And then as soon as you can identify that something as something very nefarious and technological that nobody can understand except for deep state actors, then you've hit the sweet spot. You've hit the sweet spot with an awful lot of people. Here's the problem on the, just to set aside this specific one, but so the voting machines are kept at the county level. So you would need to hack those machines and upload software into them. You would have to do it in a way that changes, you know, let's say every hundredth Biden, sorry, every hundredth Trump vote to a Biden vote. You would need it though, to be small enough, not to raise huge eyebrows. You wouldn't want it to be one out. You would need it, though, to be small enough not to raise huge

eyebrows. You wouldn't want it to be one out of every two Trump votes, for instance. But you'd need it to be big enough to swing a 20,000 vote ratio or something like that. And you couldn't do it in a state that has the backups, the paper backups, because then you're running into the problem that now in Georgia, like you'd get caught. You also can't do it at the statewide level. change numbers there because all of these, you know, the precincts when they report in their numbers, like keep all this paper and reporting and like, it's, it's so sloppy as to be hack proof, if that makes sense, you know? Um, and so any canvas would catch those errors at the statewide database level immediately. So that wouldn't even do you any good after a couple of days. So yeah, the computer thing has always been very, very strange to me because it's the least helpful one and the most likely to get you caught and sent to jail at many, many levels across the

way. But David, can we talk about adding ballots and changing ballots? Yes, please. Let's do it. Okay. So again, I want to be very clear. I do not dispute that you can add or change a real number of ballots. When we talk about how those recounts, those three statewide recounts didn't shift votes more than 500 and change the outcome of an election, you could mess around with 500 ballots. But what I'm going to talk about today is messing around with 20,000 ballots and why you can't do that. So let's start with adding ballots. So this is the idea that you just sort of dump a bunch of pre-filled out ballots into the vote totals and that that

adds 20,000 votes to Joe Biden's total. This comes in several forms, but like the Lindsey Graham idea about dead people voting in Pennsylvania, for instance, he said that on the Sunday show. So this isn't kooks making this up. Okay, so let's take the Lindsey Graham version about the dead people voting. So that means that they're already registered to vote and all you have to do is go find the dead people and vote for them. So first of all, I mean,

for some people that doesn't sound that hard, but let's walk through it. First of all, don't forget that nine out of 10 registered voters vote. That was true in, but let's walk through it. First of all, don't forget that nine out of 10 registered voters vote. That was true in 2016. It's true this time. So you actually would have to spread out these ballots because you don't want to, for instance, have 100% voter turnout or, oops, 104% voter turnout or something.

That will get you caught really quickly. So you're going to have to find the dead people across like 200 precincts and then just add in a few dead people per precinct. I don't see how you can get to 20,000 doing that. And let's, by the way, we're just leaving out the like, you somehow got a ballot that has all of the security measures and watermarks and all of that. We're assuming that you were able to doing that. And let's, by the way, we're just leaving out the, like, you somehow got a ballot that has all of the security measures and watermarks and all of that. We're assuming that

you were able to do that. So using someone who's already registered, who didn't vote, who's dead, again, no doubt you could probably do it, you know, 10, 15. I'll give you 50, David. I bet that you can find 50 obituaries and match them up with voter registration and go in and pretend to be that person. Say you don't have an ID, sign an affidavit, yada, yada. You could do that. I think it'd be really hard to collect their absentee ballots from their house because you don't know that they're coming. You could request that absentee ballot. Some states it's easier than others, But again, you know, OK, 50 ballots. I'll give you 50 on that one. But as you might have noticed, there's another way, and that's to create the fraudulent registrations themselves. So boost the denominator and then you keep it at

90 percent. Aha. So I went to the Pennsylvania voter registration website to see about what all you would need to register to vote in Pennsylvania. You need a Pennsylvania driver's license or a social security number. But if you don't have those, you could check a box and then you need an address. Here's the problem with that, David. All of that's public information. So if all of a sudden there's 20,000 extra people who checked the box that they don't have a license or a social security number, that's going to raise some eyebrows. Second, what address are you using for them? You need 20,000. Let's even say like, you know, you're going to assume a four person home. So you need 5,000 addresses, different addresses

to do that. You're not going to do 20,000 at a single address. That's not going to work. And by the way, people do spot check those. So if all of a sudden there's 150 new registrants at a single address, I mean, we see this all the time, right? So-and-so goes and says like, this isn't even a real address and these people don't live here. And the penalty if you're caught doing this is seven years in prison and a fine of $15,000. So I still don't see how you do it 20,000 times. Okay. So how then are the dead people voting, by the way, if they're not fraudulent votes, like what I'm saying. It's data entry errors because David, as we all know, never attribute to malfeasance what you can attribute

to incompetence. Yep. And this is such a good example of that. So for instance, if you're typing on my keyboard, which has the numbers on the top instead of the separate type pad key, for instance, and you type in the birthday 1992, the nine is right next to the zero and you could easily hit that zero. And so then all of a sudden that person born in 1992, all of a sudden is born in 1902. Well, now they're 118 years old and then you get these snarky posts that so-and-so is 118 years old. Right. Really? Really?

When in fact they're 28 and someone just typed in their birthday wrong. The other way that this happens is that the father and son share the same name. They sent two absentee ballots. Yes, they sent the deceased father an absentee ballot. The son returns a ballot and it gets put in as if it were the father's ballot, even though if you go look, the son didn't vote and the deceased father did.

And again, I'm not saying that the son in some of these cases fills out both ballots and sends them both in and fraudulently signs his name. I am saying that can both happen and it can happen 100, 200 times. It can't happen 20,000 times. Right. And I think that that's one of the really key things here is I keep having people sending me notes or messages about, well, I heard about this one person here who committed fraud or that somebody found out that someone was casting a vote and their wife's maiden name in this other state. Therefore, vote fraud, therefore, therefore what? So these individual instances of fraud do not prove mass fraud. And we have to be really careful about that.

And we have to be very clear about that. No, we are not saying when we talk about this conspiracy theory is wrong or that conspiracy theory is wrong, that there's no vote fraud that happens. Yes, it happens. There's a Heritage Foundation database of individual cases of vote fraud.

It happens. The issue is, does it happen at the scale to change the votes and the outcome to change the outcome of this election? No, no. So Sarah, while we were going through, and I think the very moment when we were going through the Dominion theory, do you want to hear what the president of the United States tweeted? Sure. president of the United States tweeted.

Sure. Report. Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide. Data analysis finds 220,000 Pennsylvania votes switched from President Trump to Biden. 941,000 Trump votes deleted. States using Dominion voting system switched 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Guess who he cited for this? Tell me.

Chanel Rion, Rion, whatever, the OAN, One America News Network, chief White House correspondent, and the One America News Network. Well, okay. All caps, too. All caps. So it's with emphasis emphasis let's do my last conspiracy theory and that's changing ballots from trump votes to biden votes so this is the ballot harvesting idea where you go around and collect all of these ballots and then you change them somehow so first of all um only 14 states allow unlimited ballot harvesting.

So it's actually very risky to do it in a state that doesn't allow ballot harvesting because that's how that North Carolina guy got arrested and charged with illegal ballot handling in 2019. And it overturned that election, in fact. So, OK, you're going to do it in one of the states that allows unlimited ballot harvesting. Great, cool plan. So this guy published this op-ed in like the New York Post, I think, talking about how like he used to do this regularly in New Jersey, I think, because of course it's New Jersey. And first of all, like at that point, you're now taking the word of an admitted felon,

but okay, you know, whistlebl, maybe. So he says that it takes about five minutes per ballot to steam open the ballot and then use a pen or whatever to cross it out and change the vote. Or he said he had other blank ballots and it's not that hard. Okay, I'm fine. You know what? Great. Somehow he changes the ballot. I'll even give you that hard. Okay. I'm fine. You know what? Great. Somehow he changes the ballot. I'll even give you that one. Um, here's the problem. That's 12 ballots an hour. And let's say you got your three most trusted friends and you were able to collect all of these ballots, 20,000 of them, remember, and did this eight hours a day for the week before the election. That's 2,000 ballots that you'd be able to change. Now, oh, and by the way, I found a video of a guy trying to do this

based on how that guy said to do it. And he tried for 12 minutes to steam open a single envelope in Arizona and he couldn't get it to work. But here's the other thing. Like I see all these people saying like, okay, fine. Then you just have 5,000 people do it. I haven't seen 5,000 people keep a secret to do anything. You think 5,000 people can collect somehow all of these ballots, by the way, and no one's going to notice. But also all of the 5,000 are truly diehard ride or die types on this conspiracy? No way. One of them won't be able to keep their mouth shut. In fact, it's not going to be one. It's going to be like a ton out of 5,000. No way.

So that's why you want to keep your criminal conspiracies to a very few number of people and really only the people that you trust. And you're just not going to get to 20,000 that way. Right. And then, of course, you have to answer, who are these people handing their ballots over to a stranger? Again, people do it, but not at the 20,000 level. I do think that voter, not even intimidation, coercion, let's call it, you know, you go to a nursing home and you're helping folks fill out their ballot. You're like, oh, that Joe Biden seems awfully nice. Why don't you vote for him? And then they vote for Joe Biden.

vote for him and then they vote for joe biden you know we can have a whole discussion over whether that's voter fraud but it is not whatever this is and it is not changing the votes of 20 000 ballots sorry no and and that's why a lot of the conspiracy theories are shifting to sort of these vote fairy theories like the dominion and hammer and scorecard But as you've pointed out, even there, there are on-paper records. Hammer would have to be the most super, super-y, super-magical computer of all to fill in bubbles with a pen. That would be extraordinary. But yeah, I mean, this is why the difficulty and the lack of evidence and the constant debunking of sort of these, you know, big bag of ballots was dumped off. And it turned out to be not ballots at all, but camera equipment for local media. You know, these things are all going away. And so you're...

Or the Trump votes that were set on fire and they were sample ballots that someone had done just to create this stunt video. That stuff makes me angry because that's someone who did it on purpose. They wanted a viral video and so they undermined faith in our election. That pisses me off. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, all of these things are falling apart. And so that's why you see the move

to sort of the vote fairy software explanation, which again, doesn't make sense in the context of when you really know the system. But for people who don't know the system, the vote fairy software, you know, the vote fairy software theory is fundamentally unfalsifiable in a way that some of these other rumors are directly falsifiable. You know what, David?

They won't even understand the explanation. I'll make a little interesting deal with our listeners on the VoteFerry software. I think that the largest change in any recount ever was just over 1,000. I think it was like 1,300, 1,400, something like that. The largest shift, I was talking about average shifts, of course, was 430. But that's not to say there weren't larger ones. So it's about, it's under 2,000.

Let's say that for sure. So the way to prove that the hammer and sickle, whatever supercomputer. Hammer and scorecard has any validity to it is during this Georgia recount hand recount where they don't use computers

that they find an aberrant number of differences than the 20 sorry than the 31 statewide recounts of the last 20 years. If that happens, David, we can revisit this. Yeah.

Yeah. If that happens, we can revisit it. But yeah. But in the meantime, can it just sink in for a minute that the President of the United States is tweeting in all caps, a wild conspiracy for theory for which there is no known basis. And we're not surprised. We're not surprised. Okay. We're running long. Is there anything that we did not cover? No, I think we covered it all. We will hit some more Supreme Court stuff on Monday.

And maybe this whole thing will be done by then. Probably not. Probably not. The Georgia hand recount is going to take a little bit over a week, I think. That sounds about right. And they're going to be pushing it because it's an awful lot of votes. So we'll know more about the final Georgia numbers within a matter of a week plus. But yeah, I don't see any evidence of imminent capitulation from the president. Let's end with a question. Does Donald Trump show up to the inauguration? Interesting.

I think yes. I think he doesn't miss a chance to be on camera. Interesting. I think yes as well. Although that's a very uncertain yes. Let me put it this way. I'm far less certain that Donald Trump will show up at the inauguration than I am certain that the the symmetry of the podcast that i just introduced right there i did i did i really liked it by the way we have a new board game in my house called root a game of woodland might and right

so for those who follow uh my board game fascinations, this was my awesome birthday present from my husband, and I will report back. I am told that it's like Wingspan, but even awesomer, which is impossible, so it can't live up to that.

But you get to choose to be a bunny, a bird, a raccoon, or a cat in the forest, and you fight against each other. I'm super pumped. Fascinating. Interesting. And I cast no scorn upon your geekery because I am currently shopping for a new gaming computer, Sarah, because the new World of Warcraft expansion is coming out soon.

Diablo 4 is coming out sometime after that. And I cannot launch back into Azeroth with a five-year-old Alienware. I need new gear. So, listeners, I've been soliciting some advice on the best

mid-range price build for a new rig that I'm not going to build myself to buy a new rig. So I'm going to solicit feedback from listeners. And if you're a Dispatch member, comment under this podcast on thedispatch.com and tell me

what kind of new computer should I get. I'm going to crowdsource this. I've been getting some good recommendations. Sounds good, David. See you Monday. All righty. We will see you all Monday and hopefully with no more vote fraud talk and instead with a discussion about one of the most fascinating and interesting legal issues for the new Supreme Court. So stay tuned.