The Daily Signal - Georgia Poll Watcher Explains State's Recount of Votes for President

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Georgia is on America's mind. At 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, the state is supposed to complete its recount of votes in the presidential election. Brant Frost V, second vice chairman of Georgia’s Republican Party, joins the show to explain the state’s recount process and why he is suspicious of the recount in Fulton County, which includes the city of Atlanta. Frost also describes his own experience as a poll watcher and why Georgia appears to be turning a little more blue with each election. We also cover these stories: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Scott Atlas, a top adviser to President Donald Trump on the coronavirus, counsels families to gather for Thanksgiving if they can. Joe Biden identifies who some of his top White House officials would be if he is inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, November 18th. I'm Jared Stetman. And I'm Virginia Allen. Jared, welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast. It's always great to co-host with you. Really excited that you're joining us today. We have a great show up. All eyes right now are on Georgia today as they finish their presidential election ballot recount. Brandt Frost the 5th, the second vice chair of Georgia's Republican Party, joins the show. to share a little bit about Georgia's recount process, his own experience as a poll watcher, and why Georgia appears to be turning a little more blue with every election. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or five-star rating on Apple podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday for the second time. within three weeks. Dorsey and Zuckerberg answered questions regarding suppression of content during the 2020 presidential election. Committee Chairman Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina questioned the CEOs over Twitter and Facebook suppression of a New York Post article discussing a laptop that was believed to belong to Hunter Biden and contains evidence linking the former Vice President Joe Biden to business dealings with the Ukrainian company Burisma. Dorsey said of Twitter's actions that we made a quick interpretation using no other evidence

than the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread. Upon further investigation, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours. Republican senators also accused Dorsey and Sagerberg of censoring election content. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, said there are instances. in which your platforms are taking a very distinctively partisan approach and not a neutral one to election content moderation, he said. Much of Tuesday's hearing focused on whether or not reforms should be made to Section 230, the law that keeps social media platforms from being

held accountable for misinformation posted on their sites by users. Graham first broached the subject of reforming Section 230 in his opening remarks per Fox News. If a newspaper does something you don't like, you think they've slandered you in a certain way, you can sue them. If a news program does something that you think is out of line, even as a politician with a high bar, you can sue them. These companies have liability protection when it comes to the content that their users engage in. You can sue the person who gave the tweet, but you can't sue Twitter who gave. that person access to the world in terms of what they said. And we've got to find a way to make sure that when Twitter and Facebook make a decision about

what's reliable and what's not, what to keep up and what to take down, that there's transparency in the system, and I think Section 230 has to be changed because we can't get there from here without change. Both social media CEOs said they were open to. reforms being made to Section 230. Scott Atlas, a top advisor to President Donald Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, has advised families to gather for Thanksgiving if they can. Atlas said that the drawbacks of social isolation for the holiday outweigh the risk

of spreading the COVID-19 virus. This kind of isolation is one of the unspoken tragedies of the elderly who are now being told, don't see your family at Thanksgiving, Atlas told Fox News, Martha McCallum. For many people, this is their final Thanksgiving, believe it or not. The crisis of facing Americans is about more than just the spread of sickness, Atlas said. It's about mitigating a whole range of potentially bad outcomes. What are we doing here? Atlas asked. I think we have a policy, which I have been advocating, which is a whole person, whole health policy.

It's not about just stopping cases of COVID. We have to talk about damage of the policy itself. Former Vice President Joe Biden has begun naming who some of his top White House officials will be if he is inaugurated, the 46th president of the United States. and many of them are members of his campaign. Jen O'Malley-Dillan, Biden's campaign manager, or take on the role of deputy chief of staff. Representative Cedric Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana,

is leaving Congress to serve as Biden's senior advisor and the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Steve Ricochetti, Biden's campaign chairman, is slated to serve as a counselor to the president, and Mike Donnellan, the campaign's chief strategist, has been named as a senior advisor to Biden, and Dana Remus, who served as the campaign's general counsel, will work in the same capacity for Biden should the former vice president be sworn into office on January 20th. According to a recent Gallup poll, significantly more Americans are willing to receive a COVID vaccine today

than said they were willing in September. 58% of Americans now say they would be vaccinated against the virus, up from only 50% in September. Among those Americans who say they would not get the vaccine, 37% say their main concern is over the rush development timeline. Gallus poll was conducted before Pfizer and Moderna announced promising results in the effectiveness of their vaccine trials. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Brant Frost V, the second vice chair of Georgia's Republican Party, about his experience serving as a poll watcher during Georgia's recount.

Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right, and if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change. I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas. We host the Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people who've made this country great.

Subscribe to the Right Side of History on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher today. I am joined by Brandt Frost the 5th, the second vice chair of Georgia's Republican Party. Brant, welcome to the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you very much. So, Brant, Georgia is on the minds right now of many Americans. And over the past several days, Georgia has been going through a recount of presidential election votes. And as of right now, the Associated Press reports that former Vice President Joe Biden is winning Georgia. of by only about 14,000 votes.

And that's out of about 5 million votes in total from Georgia. So both President Trump and the Republican Party requested that there be a recount in the state because it is so close. And you actually have been really, really involved in Georgia state politics for a long time, probably a decade, correct? Yes, that is correct, mainly since 2008 when I turned 18. Okay. Right, as soon as you could, you jumped in.

So tell us a little bit just about how common this is to see a recount in Georgia. Is this something that's happened before where we've seen calls for a presidential recount in the state of Georgia? No, this is very unusual. This is also the first time we're using our new paper balance system. Since 2001, when we began the transition over, we have only used electronic voting. with no paper ballots unless you were voting absentee by mail. This is the first time we're using our new paper ballots for voting in elections. And so this is also the first time we're having a recount, a presidential election in Georgia as well.

A lot of first in this year. Also, the first time we've ever had two Senate elections at the same time as well. So that both went to runoff. So it's definitely a year of first in Georgia as in America. It is a big year in the state of Georgia. Well, and you mentioned that transverse. of going from electronic to paper ballots, Dominion Voting Systems is the new kind of organization group

that Georgia task essentially with handling the election process as far as implementing those new machines. What do you know about Dominion voting systems? And we're hearing a lot about maybe how they're not credible. Are you very familiar with them and with the states that have formally used them? I am not. So unlike some other folks, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert and talk at length about it. So I can't speak to that other than to say that in our own county where I was one of the observing the electoral process of doing a recanvus, which I should point out is different than a recount. A recanvus is what most people think when they think the word recount.

during a recanvass a particular race chosen in this case the presidential election and all the paper ballots that were cast before election day and on election day are counted and just that one race just a single race is counted the amount of time it would take to recount every single race or recanvass every single race would just be enormous so one race is chosen in this case the presidential election for obvious reasons and each ballot is counted by hand and you have tables set up in a room with two people at each table and they will count the votes and first they will separate them out they'll take a big stack they know how many votes are in the box then they'll separate them by a candidate they voted for then they will count them out each group will be counted and the amount written down and if those all those numbers put together of candidates votes for biden trump georgensen ride in and indeterminate votes if those numbers equal the amount that was on the box originally, then that is considered a successful recanvas. In Caleda County, with over 77,000 votes, it was determined that every single vote cast for President Trump indicating by machine was also

indicated by a hand count, 51,501 votes, both machine and human count. For Joe Biden, the same was correct. However, he added one vote because one Joe Biden voter, who apparently did not realize that Joseph R. Biden was Joe Biden, wrote in the name Joe Biden, his absentee ballot. So the election review board determined that his vote should count as a Joe Biden vote. The ballot review board consists of one Republican and one Democrat representative, which I appointed the Republican representative since I'm the chairman of the county party here. So we did not find a problem with scanners indicating a massive shift or indeed any kind of shift,

whatever in our county. But I can't speak to other counties, and I certainly can't speak to the ethics of the people who run the Fulton County Board of Elections, for example. Sure, sure. So Coita County, where you live and where you were participating in that recount, is about, gosh, about a little less than an hour southwest of the city of Atlanta. So tell me a little bit more about that experience. You were there helping to. to do the recanvassing on both Friday and Saturday. We've heard a lot during this kind of poll watching scenario as it's played out with mail-in votes that people have complained about not being able

to get close enough to actually see the ballots. Was everyone who you were there with able to be close to see the ballots and to all agree Democrat and Republican, yes, this vote is for this individual? Well, the county. employees who are poll workers who have been pulled in for this special task, they actually count the votes. Typically, you will find a fairly even mix of Republican volunteers and Democrat volunteers who are poll workers, but they're not chosen based on their party. But there's a good

chance that one of them is a Republican. What you have is you take a typical room of about 10 tables. Depending on the county, there will be either one or two people observing allowed to walk around and see the process. Realistically, you can't stand at one table for very long without missing what's going on at other tables. Some people might think it make more sense to have one observer per accounting table watching the process. But the limits that we're imposed, and it varies from county to counting were one person for every five tables and that's what we had you have a room with eight tables two people counting each table and two representatives from both parties are allowed to walk around the floor where the tables are walk around the floor and stop at places they're not allowed

to speak to the counters and disrupt their count but they are allowed to watch what's going on and keep keep their own count if they wish we also have a lot of observers who are permitted to stand at the back of the room, but they really can't see anything from there. So basically each party is permitted to people for every five tables. Well, it sounds like Coedah County is a great model for the rest of this date. Like you all have really done this quite well. It sounds very organized. Have you been hearing from other counties in Georgia?

Have they experienced a similar smooth process or have there been complaints? The re-canvas did not indicate any major shift in votes except for in Floyd County where a computer card was found with some votes from a precinct which had previously not been counted. When the voting machines in each precinct print out a ballot, you type it in on a screen, you type in your choices, the ballot is printed, and then you scan it through a scanner, and then the ballot goes through it on the other side, you have a big box which is locked. well they don't open up the box and count the ballots they take the result of the little scanner so like a USB drive well one of those drives in Floyd county and of course it's not a drive but I just use that an example was was was was missed when they brought in the precinct results each precinct brought in their box and their and their little chips and drives one drive was left had just been not uploaded and so that recanvass found those extra votes and it has as a about 2,600 votes to the total statewide. And we think about two-thirds of them were for President Trump. Now, if this election were like Florida with a 600-vote margin, that would have been enough to flip the election in President Trump's favor. But of course, when the margins more than 10,000, that's not going to be the case. But other than that one example, we did not see any major shifts.

However, the issue really does not come down to a statewide problem. It comes down to one or or two and really about six counties that are all Democrat, all large, all urban, in particular one county where there had been very credible accusations at Republican poll watchers and at the Fulton County Board of Elections where they were counting votes were told to go home because at a big arena because it's a huge process in Fulton County, that's Atlanta, Georgia. They were told to go home and they were going to start in the morning. So the Republican observers went home at about 10 p.m. and then shortly thereafter, Fulton County started counting their votes again with no Republicans present and kept county until about 1 a.m. So if there was any kind of illegal voting or any kind of fraudulent ballots being counted, that would certainly have been a time when we just don't know what was happening and no Republicans were there. permitted to be there. No one apparently thought to call them to tell them to come back.

Now, this Fulton County is an overwhelmingly Democrat county run top to bottom by Democrats. The Democrats, well-known respect for the integrity of elections can be demonstrated in that they were so distressed over the 2016 election results, though curiously not distressed over the 1960 election results. And of course, we all know very well, the Democrats are well-known pension for fair and equitable elections in big cities like New York and Chicago and where the dead will not only rise again at the second coming, but they rise every four years and vote Democrat. It's certainly problematic when we begin to see the number of deceased individuals who are still on those voter rolls in, like you say, a lot of these big cities. Now, I want to ask a little bit

more about this Atlanta situation. Was there any explanation given by the mayor of Atlanta, by those that were in charge overseeing that polling location as to how this error was made that Republicans were sent home and then still ballots were continued to be counted late into the night? Everyone has an excuse. I don't know if it's a good one, but everyone has an excuse. Every child caught with their hand in the cookie jar has a good reason or at least an excuse a reason why they were doing it whether or not anyone believes them and it saves them for punishment is another matter altogether i'm there there have been multiple explanations uh and so it's hard to say which one is the correct one uh there's talk about uh major water leakage a pipe burst um there's talk about how the secretary of

state was insist and others were asking for them to continue the count because after all 10 p.m. is rather early to stop counting votes, particularly in an election as close as this, and with Georgia being a swing state. So there were calls for them to come back to you and a plausible deniability situation where under such a stressful situation, someone can always claim that, well, I just forgot or it slipped through the cracks to remind everybody to come back. So it's very difficult to prove it's very difficult to prove malice in it. intent. Sure. Sure. So do you foresee any situation where, you know, all other Georgia counties given the green light, but Fulton County, Atlanta County, is said, let's double check this and let's recount this county one more time, or is that probably not possible? Unfortunately, today it is very difficult, as in previous times, to after the fact, detect voter fraud,

and malfeasance because for the simple fact that a ballot cannot be pulled out of the stack once it's stuck into it. In other words, you may have a illegally cast vote or a thousand of them, but to look at them, they don't look any different than any other ballot. They do not have a person's name on them. They do not have a bright neon sticker that says, hey, I'm a fake vote. They look like anyone else's vote. And it is impossible to tell, and it is impossible to identify the ones they've been cast in with all the legitimate votes. Let's talk just for a moment about Georgia as a whole. I lived in Georgia for a number of years, went to high school there. And back in 2010, 2011, Georgia really was a solidly red conservative state. So, Brandt, what has happened as someone who's

who's been so involved in Georgia politics and policy for so long. What has happened in your state to where now it's definitely a solidly a swing state? You have to remember that the Democrat Party in Georgia had been living off the residual effects of over 100 years of domination in our state politics. We hadn't had a Republican governor since 1872. So by the 1990s, there was a definite shift beginning in Georgia politics and Starting in 1992, the Republicans had a major surge with every two years. We gained substantially in the state legislature. We gained congressional delegations.

We took control of the majority of the congressman from Georgia in 1994. And we came very close to winning the governor's race in 1994. And as a result, the Republicans continued to build up and gain in strength and momentum in the Democrats without a strong grassroots base. they've been in power for so long and it had atrophied. They hadn't felt the need to have one. And as a result, the Republicans in 2002, in a big upset, won the governor's race. Many people expected Republicans to be competitive in 2006 for the governor's race in 1998. But we lost in 98. And in 2002, it was thought that Governor Roy Barnes was too hard to beat. But Sonny Perdue, who is now Agricultural Secretary and the Trump administration actually defeated in a big upset, Governor Barnes. And ever since 2000, The Republican Party has been very strong in Georgia, has dominated statewide politics, won every governor's race, won every Senate election, and won every constitutional officer starting in 2010. But that obscured the fact, two major factors, lack of funding and resources for the Democrats, and the fact that the Obama presidency destroyed most of the Democrat Party in the South. across the south you saw from states like Arkansas and Oklahoma to West Virginia and Kentucky,

Democrat candidates being going down to defeat largely as a result of the unpopularity of the Obama administration. So when you consider that from 2008 to 2016, Republicans had great years in Georgia, you have to realize that that was during the Obama presidency and the fact that the Democrat Party had no real operation capable of contesting Georgia. But starting in 2013, the Democrats began to rebuild their effort. Stacey Abrams was a major leader in that effort. And since 2013, they have spent seven years rebuilding. And to today, we now find ourselves in a situation where they're able to compete with us. Georgia has always – Georgia's demographics are largely the same as they were four years ago.

In fact, exit poll data indicates that on key levels, it's almost exactly the same. The difference is that the Democrat Party is more well equipped, better funded, and able to compete, and they also believe they can win in Georgia. Four years ago, they saw Georgia as a possible bonus, but they didn't see it as a major target state like they did this year. The Republican Party, until recently, has also not been as prepared as it might be, largely due to the fact that the Democrats appear to be weak. So why do you have to train extra hard to fight an opponent who seems weak and easy to defeat? Fortunately, last year, when I was elected vice chairman, we also elected a new chairman,

David Schaefer, former state senator and former executive director of the George Republican Party, under whose leadership we have been able to basically accomplish the work of about four years in less than 18 months. and since he was elected, we've trained over 13,000 volunteers. We've held voter drives around the state. We've knocked on over a million. I believe it's over two million doors now, and we've made millions of phone calls. This is more than any than the Republican Party has done in Georgia

in any presidential election than any two presidential elections combined going back for many cycles. So we have been very encouraged to see the outporn of support since the November elections right here. You would think people would be discouraged, but actually it's caused people to sign up and volunteer and to do their part because there is so much that we have seen in the last few weeks

with Democrats talking about moving to Georgia that has inspired Republicans to become more active and to do more because you saw so many Republicans feel that Georgia was a safe state and they took it for granted, not our leadership, but just a rank and foul Republican who might have if they live, lived in Florida or Ohio have gone out and volunteered, maybe knocked on some doors or made some

calls, but because they felt they were in a safe red state, they did not do what they could have done. And so that has really – the scales have fallen for people's eyes. They now realize they have to fight because Georgia is a swing state as much as Florida ever was. Indeed, if you look at the results, Georgia was much closer than Florida or Ohio. So in some ways, Florida is now a pink state leaning red, and Ohio is a red state, but North Carolina and Georgia are swing states. So we have to take that into consideration. But we are prepared to meet the challenge. We have thousands of people all over the country who are offering to come on their own expense to volunteer to help in these efforts in Georgia in the upcoming runoffs.

So we're very encouraged, and I think it's important for people to realize that it is, the differences in Georgia are not so much due to changes in demographics, although we have seen some of that, but mainly due to the fact that up until recently only one political party was actually playing to win, and the other party did not have the resources to compete, much like a major athletic event where you have two teams at a baseball or basketball game, and in a major sporting event, one team is obviously better for. funded, has better players, has the resources to hire the best coaches and such, and they're going to roll over their opponents because they simply are out classing them. Now that the two parties are much more evenly classed, you see Georgia being what it truly is, a competitive state. Brant, we just so appreciate your time today. It's just fascinating to hear some of this history and get into a little bit of just the details of what is happening on the ground in Georgia, what you're seeing, what you've experienced. Thank you, much for joining the show. Thank you. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening

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