Cheap Seats 2021

Time on Target - 09/29

By Rich Trzupek
  I got the call Friday night. Reports in the mainstream media were starting to come in. Apparently results of the audit of the Maricopa County 2020 presidential election results, scheduled to be released the next day, had been leaked. Hilariously, the report showed that Biden had actually won Maricopa (a republican controlled county and one of the largest in the nation) by more votes than originally thought. That was, or at least would be, the official story.
  My correspondent warned me that it was just that – a story. Aware of the damning audit report that investigators would issue the next day, the Uniparty (Dems plus anti-Trump Republicans) came up with a simple yet effective strategy. They had initiated a recount, which is far different than an audit, and used it to discredit the audit report, relying on a willing, complicit media to continue to carry their water.
  If one is going to claim that the audit report gave more votes to Joe, wouldn’t you confirm that with the actual auditors? Is that so hard? Our lazy, stupid media could not be bothered to do even that. They ran with the conflation of the recount with the audit, just as they were supposed to.
  A recount is an exercise in mathematics: Add up all the votes in Column A and all the votes in Column B and announce the totals. Nobody is disputing that more ballots showed up in Maricopa County for Biden than ballots for Trump in 2020. What’s in question is the validity of the ballots.
  That’s the purpose of a forensic audit. Auditing of any kind addresses the validity of data and processes involved in preserving the integrity of the data, not the accuracy of computation. Consider a simple analogy: A competent accountant can make financial data look credible, even when cooking the books. With very, very few exceptions lay people like you and I would never be able to uncover, much less prove, the deception. That’s why companies employ auditors when they suspect wrong-doing.
  Enron, Goldman Sachs, Bernie Madoff, etc., all happened because skilled specialists managed to successfully cover up base data and basic processes that would have exposed their machinations. And they did so by following the simple rule that has become the basis of mega-scale fraudulent activity in the 21st century: The more complex the process, the easier it is to manipulate.
  It’s a theme I see in my day job every day. I am an actual expert in environmental issues and especially in environmental issues that involve air quality. I’m a chemist and I’ve spent my entire career – spanning some 35 years at this point – dealing with air quality issues across the nation and in many parts of the globe. I’ve never been disqualified by any court as an expert in this area. I’ve testified before Congress. I’ve written multiple books and numerous peer-reviewed articles covering air quality topics.
  The point is not to convince you, dear reader, that I deserve nomination into the national Air Quality Hall of Fame should such an organization ever exist, but rather to assert that I know a crapload more about my particularly narrow and terribly complex field than 99 percent plus of the people who attempt to digest what I have to say.
  That’s not a criticism. Not at all – and please don’t take it that way. You should not be expected to understand the subtleties of photochemical reactions that create ozone. You should not be expected to understand that whatever relative danger PM-2.5 emissions represent to the populace, the vast majority of those emissions are generated by wildfires in forests that are national forests that have delegated responsibility for forest management to the host state and blue states are exceptionally crappy at responsible forest management. You should not be expected to understand how computer modeling works and how easily models can be manipulated.
  All of that boring detail, and so many other aspects, fall under my purview when air quality issues are involved. But what about elections? I’m no expert in how to best manage election data. I think I’d win a crapload of money by betting that you aren’t an expert here either. So whom do we trust? Some of us trust journalists to unbiasedly identify experts, something that they are spectacularly unskilled at doing. Some of run us to the interwebs and find an “expert” who agrees with us so we can feel good about ourselves.
  The thing is: Understanding an election should not require the electorate, poll watchers, poll certifiers, or poll workers to trust any experts. There’s only one way to ensure fair elections any longer: Go back to paper ballots with strict voter ID laws. Anybody and everybody can understand how they work. Democrat, Independent or Republican, why wouldn’t you want to depend on paper instead of algorithms? Consider the advice of one veteran politician:
  “Some tech experts in Silicon Valley whom I have met who say ‘maybe what they’ll do this time is to disrupt the actual election: shut down the servers that you send results to; interfere with the operation of voting machines because too many of them are linked to the internet.’ We are still very vulnerable!” Hillary Clinton, 2018.
  Email: richtrzupek@gmail.com