Addressing claims that the 2024 election was "stolen"

November 21, 2024

In a shameless exhibition of partisan cowardice, Republicans on the House Ethics Committee blocked the release of the report on allegations of sex trafficking and drug use by former congressman (and congressman-elect) Matt Gaetz. Based on comments by committee members, the committee deadlocked on partisan lines regarding the release of the report. See Republicans on House Ethics reject for now releasing report on Matt Gaetz | AP News

The Republican members of the House Ethics Committee are

• Michael Guest, Mississippi (Chair)

• David P. Joyce, Ohio

• John H. Rutherford, Florida

• Andrew R. Garbarino, New York

• Michelle Fischbach, Minnesota

The committee will vote again on December 5, 2024. If you live in a district represented by one of the above Republicans, make your voice heard! You can reach your representative by entering your Zip Code here: Find Your Representative | house.gov.

JD Vance escorts Matt Gaetz through the halls of the Senate

VP-elect JD Vance was finally allowed to emerge from the shadow of the de-facto VP-elect Elon Musk. The bad news for Vance is that he resumed the spotlight to make the rounds in the Senate with Matt Gaetz to garner support from Republican Senators. To be clear, being associated with Matt Gaetz is a punishment for being a drag on Trump's campaign, not a reward for Vance’s unflinching loyalty to Trump.

It is beyond maddening that the president-elect seems to be preferentially selecting nominees for senior positions based on their history of allegations of perpetrating or ignoring sexual abuse. To date, those nominees include the following: Pete Hegseth (DOD), Matt Gaetz (Attorney General), Robert Kennedy (HHS), and Linda McMahon (DOE).

Update on Department of Education nominee Linda McMahon

As an update regarding Linda McMahon: I noted yesterday that her qualifications for leading the Department of Education included “aspiring to be a teacher but never becoming one.” My snarky comment was incomplete.

I should have included the fact that she lied about obtaining a bachelor’s degree in education—a fictious degree that secured her appointment to the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned from the state board of education one day before the Connecticut Courier published a story revealing her lie about her qualifications.

It is no wonder educators are insulted by Trump's nomination of McMahon. See Newsweek, Linda McMahon's Nomination Attacked by Educators: 'Slap in the Face'.

Nance Mace attacks Sarah McBride, the first trans person elected to Congress

It is also beyond maddening that Trump is asking Congress to look past the allegations of sexual assault for his nominees as Republicans in the House passed a spiteful “bathroom bill” designed to prohibit the single trans member of Congress—Sarah McBride—from using the bathroom corresponding to her gender. See NYT, House Republicans Target McBride With Capitol Bathroom Bill.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Nancy Mace—who specializes in garnering attention for herself. Mace’s bill was ostensibly designed to “protect women” from trans women—like Representative-elect Sarah McBride. Mace’s former spokesperson, Natalie Johnson, posted the following statement:

“Protecting women” in Congress would be introducing a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again, rather than dropping a messaging bill that’s sole goal is getting on TV.

Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely not about protecting women. It’s just a ploy for media attention.

It is disgraceful that Republicans stigmatize trans people by suggesting that they are predators who are threat to others. Trump is the only president in history to be found civilly liable for defamation based on an underlying claim of sexual assault—and yet Nancy Mace is unfailingly loyal to Trump. Astoundingly, Mace expressed contempt for Sarah McBride, saying, "It's offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he's my equal.”

Mace’s statement is offensive on so many levels it would take several paragraphs to deconstruct. But here’s the bottom line: Yes, Sarah McBride is Nancy Mace’s equal in the eyes of the law, as are all trans and LGBTQ people—a proposition that Republicans are doing their best to dispute.

---

---

Trump's latest nomination is another insult to the people of America and Europe

Trump has nominated Matt Whitaker as the Ambassador to NATO. See Newsweek, Trump Nominates Matthew Whitaker for US Ambassador to NATO.

Whitaker served as the Acting Attorney General after Jeff Sessions resigned. Whitaker has practiced law at several regional firms and managed or founded various small businesses. In other words, he has absolutely no qualifications to serve as Ambassador to NATO—unless his main task is to abandon the alliance that is the cornerstone of American-European mutual defense.

---

Please be cautious about alleging that the 2024 election was hacked and “stolen”

I am starting to receive emails from readers forwarding claims from a computer hacking expert who writes on Substack. The expert, Stephen Spoonamore, claims that Republicans “stole” the election by “inserting” hundreds of thousands of “bullet ballots” that voted only for Trump but not other candidates down-ballot. I won’t link to the article because I do not want to spread unsubstantiated information.

The crux of the Spoonamore’s argument is contained in the following excerpt from his article:

Approximately 600,000 votes are for Donald Trump but with no down ballot choices.  These are either inserted “bullet ballots” for the Presidential race or manipulated data fields.

Spoonamore provides no evidence for the above statement. He simply asserts it as fact. Since ballots are secret, there is no way to know which ballots voted “only for Trump” but not for other down-ballot candidates. Spoonamore doesn’t explain how he knows the content of secret ballots. (In comparison, it is possible to calculate how many ballots cast a vote only for president (Trump or Harris) by comparing the combined presidential vote total against down-ballot totals.)

Spoonamore attempts to support his argument by claiming (a) it is technically feasible (in his view) to insert “bullet ballots” because of vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, and (b) the voting patterns of the alleged “bullet ballots” are anomalous, and strongly suggest (to him) that the 2024 election was rigged.

There is a lot to say on this subject, and I cannot devote the entirety of this newsletter to addressing every claim raised by Spoonamore. But before you repeat his claim that the was 2024 election was (or could have been) rigged, please consider a few facts.

My purpose in discussing these facts is to urge caution and restraint. If we try to explain Kamala Harris’s loss by alleging that the election was rigged, we will fail to consider political reasons for the loss and we will undermine confidence in future elections—and our democracy. Those are both bad outcomes.

I will keep my responses brief, but I urge you to consider and investigate these arguments on your own before suggesting that the 2024 election was rigged.

As background, it might be relevant to know that Spoonamore has claimed that previous presidential elections were “stolen.” See this video. He has been a a critic and a skeptic of electronic voting machines for more than two decades. That doesn’t mean he is wrong in his assertions regarding 2024. But this is not the first time he has claimed that a presidential election was “stolen.”

Factors to consider when evaluating allegations that the 2024 election was rigged include the following:

Independent news organizations conducted exit polling that confirmed voter preferences and turnout.  Several independent news organizations conducted exit polling of random voters across the nation. The results of those exit interviews were consistent with the outcome of the vote and voter turnout. Those exit polls predicted a Trump victory as soon as the polls closed on the East Coast—before most of the votes were counted.

Exit polling serves as a rough but independent “check’ on the electoral outcome and voter turnout. Unless the news organizations and thousands of random voters were participants in the conspiracy to “steal” the election, it is difficult to reconcile the consistency between the exit polling and the actual vote as tabulated by election officials.

Excess votes would have been detected by voting officials. Spoonamore’s key contention is that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes were “inserted” on Election Day. That seems implausible. Election officials know how many voters showed up at the polls. Officials reconcile the number of voters who showed up to the number of votes cast. If there is a mismatch, that discrepancy would be noted immediately.

Spoonamore discusses “bullet ballots” as if they are free floating entities that can be inserted into the system without notice. But ballots don’t cast themselves. Voters cast ballots. And voters can be counted and reconciled to the number of ballots.

Spoonamore has an answer for that obvious problem: A handful of hackers can circumvent the “tabulators” by anticipating in advance which voters will not vote. And therein lies the problem with allegations of conspiracy: Every objection to their implausibility is met with a new conspiracy to cover the obvious hole in the first conspiracy. They become unfalsifiable.

Spoonamore does not provide citations to the data for his claims about the rarity of “bullet ballots.”  Spoonamore’s argument is premised on his assertion that “bullet ballots” are extremely rare. Spoonamore asserts “In Presidential Races since 1980, these bullet ballots rarely account for more than 1% of the total votes.”

Spoonamore does not cite any source for his assertion of bullet ballots are rare. I am not an elections expert, but I reported before the election that “bullet ballots” were a well-known and widespread problem described as “down-ballot roll-off.” Indeed, I posted an interview with co-founder of Sister District about the widespread phenomenon of voters who vote only the “top of the ticket” and fail to vote on “down-ballot races.”

Sister District conducted a rigorous survey of “down-ballot drop-off.” A summary of the conclusions from Sister District is contained here: Downballot roll-off: Lopsided roll-off among major parties may be linked to downballot losses | Sister District Project.

The summary of the Sister District survey says, in part,

State legislative candidates underperformed presidents in vote totals in 88.60% of comparisons . . . .

In other words, in 88% of the vote totals analyzed, “roll-off” occurred between the presidential candidate and the down-ballot candidates. Sister District’s report concludes that “downballot roll-off is common.”

The Sister District report does not quantify what percentage of the observed roll-off included only a vote for president and no other candidate (Spoonamore’s “bullet-ballots”) but the phenomenon of down-ballot roll-off is the rule, not the exception.

To conclude, let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying:

I haven’t conducted an independent investigation of the 2024 presidential election. Neither has Spoonamore. My observations are based on inference. So are his.

My analysis causes me to have strong doubts that there was a conspiracy to overturn the 2024 election through hacking / inserting “bullet ballots.”

Spoonamore makes serious allegations without citing to sources for his assertions about the frequency of bullet ballots that voted only for Trump. The existence of bullet ballots seems to be consistent with widespread down-ballot drop-off.

Finally, (a) the consistency between exit polling and the actual results (both voter preference and turnout) suggests the election was not rigged and (b) election officials would have noted the discrepancy between voters appearing at the polls and an excess number of votes cast.

I will not be drawn into a lengthy debate over Spoonamore’s article (or other election rigging allegations). My point is this: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet without applying critical thinking to assertions that lack authoritative support.

We cannot become like the election deniers who attempted to stop the peaceful transfer of power because of rumors about Italian satellites controlling Chinese thermostats.

Election fraud is illegal. It should be investigated and prosecuted. But making an allegation of election fraud requires more than an assertion that “It could happen” or “I think the results are suspicious.” And beware any allegation of a conspiracy that meets every objection by positing a new conspiracy to rebut obvious holes in the original conspiracy.

---

Concluding Thoughts

I have de-activated my Twitter account—which I used primarily to follow Professor Laurence Tribe, who has now moved to Bluesky under the handle @tribelaw. I can be found on Bluesky @rbhubbell (or just use the Bluesky search function to locate “Robert Hubbell”). As noted several days ago, my goal is to amplify Democratic and progressive voices on Bluesky to help create an alternative platform to Elon Musk’s vanity social media platform.

Several readers sent emails and posted Comments saying that they understood and supported the decision of Morning Joe and Mika Brzezinski to open a channel of communication with Trump. As I noted in my replies, I disagree. Doing so normalizes Trump and teaches him that there are no consequences for his outrageous, illegal conduct.

Case in point: Trump falsely suggested that Morning Joe had murdered a congressional staffer who died from a fall caused by a congenital heart condition. PolitiFact | Donald Trump spreads baseless claim that MSNBC host murdered a staff member in 2001.

Trump has never apologized or retracted the comment. Trump’s reward for effectively accusing Morning Joe of murder is that Morning Joe is now groveling before Trump.

The only reasonable conclusion for Trump to draw from that sequence of events is that he should abuse and bully more people.

Resisting and condemning Trump every time he crosses the line of decency and legality is essential to maintaining democratic norms. If we fail to do so, Trump will be emboldened. We must be the guardrails, the firewall, and the resistance.

Talk to you tomorrow!

---

Daily Dose of Perspective

Below is my second image of the Gamma Cygni Nebula, which is 1,800 light years from Earth. Because the nebula was nearly directly overhead, the image is crisper and more detailed than the previous image (taken when the nebula was low on the horizon).

Enjoy!