CHASING PHANTOM VOTER FRAUD IN WASHINGTON COUNTY

As I’ve been traveling the country visiting with election officials, I have become painfully aware that most of our officials have no idea what they are doing. Follow the Data with Dr. Frank

The “stop the steal” movement, which began after Joe Biden was elected president in November 2020, has been kept alive by former president Donald Trump and his minions. Partisan conspiracy theorists and their so-called experts continue to badger local election officials in battleground states as they attempt to overturn election results.

One would think that Washington County, which has become a solidly Republican voting district, would escape the attention of these efforts to perpetuate the “big-lie.” Why seek to uncover voter fraud to place Trump back in the White House in a voting district he won by double digits?  Defying all reason, Washington County is now at the center of the voter fraud storm.

This chain of events began last July when Monongahala resident Ashley Duff and her supporters presented an “election integrity report” to the county’s Election Review Committee at a raucous public meeting. The report was based, in part, on the voter fraud theories of “election expert”, Douglas Frank. The plan required a redundant review of votes cast and would have triggered expensive state law required replacement of the voting machines following the audit. To the relief of the commissioners and county taxpayers the committee voted down the proposal.

Unfortunately, members of the local “stop the steal” movement never take no for an answer despite procedures that have established fraud-free elections in Washington County. Since July, they have continued to be a hostile vocal presence at public commissioner meetings and insisted that further action be taken.

To appease this vocal segment of their party, the Republican Commissioners decided to schedule a private meeting on February 17 with the purported election guru, Douglas Frank. Following a 90-minute presentation the Washington County officials in attendance found Frank’s alleged facts to be too generic with no evidence that there was voter fraud in the recent local election. According to the Observer Reporter Frank was instructed “to return with specific data involving Washington County and the evidence backing it up.” Ashley Duff, who had sponsored Frank to appear, thanked county officials for holding the meeting.

Things went downhill fast after the Thursday meeting. Douglas Frank was inexplicably motivated to post outrageous remarks attacking county officials on his social media page titled, “Follow the Data with Dr. Frank.” His first post arrogantly demanded “formal legal investigations for illegal machines and illegal certification of their county election.” The second post had the audacity to call for “resignations as we expose county official’s illegal activities and unethical behavior as servants of the people. When we are done with them, their public reputations will be dashed to smithereens.”

In my 45 years of practicing law, I have never experienced an impartial expert witness cross the line to become the chief advocate for a highly politically charged position. His personal attacks on dedicated public servants who took the time to hear him out and who sought more information concerning his whacky theories is shocking. They destroy any credibility to his presentation and propositions.

Douglas Frank is the former chair of the math and science department at a Cincinnati High School.  He developed a voter fraud reputation through his YouTube channel that featured ongoing pro Trump analyses of the 2020 election. This was followed by interviews with wealthy Trump supporter, MyPillow, CEO Mike Lindell. Frank was hired by Lindell and Republican state officials to challenge election results in battleground states. In interviews, he has made it clear that his new gig is more profitable than teaching High School math. Lindell has already spent over 25 million dollars on his efforts to push election fraud claims, and Frank is one of his handful of “expert” beneficiaries.

Those who have attended Frank’s sales pitch equate it to an academic math lesson complete with charts and graphs. No matter where he is speaking, the conclusions are always the same. Frank claims that election fraud is wide spread and follows an identical formula to rig each local election. The voter registration database is inflated, false ballots are placed into the system, and corrupt efforts are made to clean up the fraud after the election is complete.

Frank’s theories have been debunked by multiple sources. An investigative team at the Washington Post found Frank’s claims to be nonsensical. His use of a mathematical algorithm called a “6^th-degree polynomial” is impressive sounding chicanery that does not prove fraud. A breakdown of the math shows nothing more than that voter turnout is consistent by age group. A report from the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee led by two Republicans, argued that Frank's claims were not "sound," saying they did not account for moving patterns or for same-day registration that would create natural disparities between Census data and voter registrations. Justin Grimmer, a Stanford University professor who has carefully followed Frank’s involvement in overturning the election looked at data from 42 states and concluded, “There is no basis for any of this.”

In Washington County, as in most jurisdictions, there are extensive election security protocols that would prevent the fantastical hacking and phantom vote stuffing that Frank has described. Trusting election results is at the core of our democracy. Informed citizens and elected officials need to stop giving credence to conspiracy theorists who push a predetermined result with ill-conceived data to back it up. Douglas Frank and his ilk are a danger to our republic and need to be rebuked.

 

 

THE PARADOXES OF FREE SPEECH

 

The clash of the “information age” and tribal politics has produced many interesting social dynamics. One of the most significant has been the effect of free speech in both democratic and authoritarian societies.  A timely, new historical treatise titled Free Speech: A History From Socrates To Social Media, (Basic Books, February 8, 2022) by Jacob Mchangama traces the history of free expression over the past 25 centuries. The study ends by focusing on the critical question, under what circumstances can unbridled speech be tolerated in our modern world. The answer to this question raises several paradoxes that are not easy to resolve.

The roots of free speech are ancient. The earliest examples of open debate and tolerance of social dissent were discussed by Pericles in 431 BC Athens.  Over the course of time, free speech would never have been considered a fundamental right but for the works of heretical trailblazers like Milton, Spinoza, the English Levellers, the French feminist, Olympe de Gouges and Frederick Douglas (among many others). The good news according to historian Jacob Mchangama is that today, “The principle of free speech has been transformed into an international human rights norm aided by advances in communications technology, unimaginable to the early modern mind.”

However, in today’s troubled political times Mchangama also believes we are witnessing “the dawn of a free-speech recession.”  I will consider this retrenchment of free speech through a series of paradoxes that capture the essence of where global thinking stands today.

Free Speech Is Only For Those Who Agree.  As an intellectual principle, most Americans support the concept of free speech. However, out in the political trenches this support collapses along ruthless identity and tribalistic lines. Constitutional free speech in America was intended to protect minorities against intolerance. Some of today’s progressive thinkers seek to undermine this ideal by working to purge from public discourse those views that are deemed racist, sexist or anti-LGBTQ.  Conversely, some conservatives have attacked the media, proposed illiberal laws that prohibit discussion of theories about race, gender and even history and have supported libel laws to punish unwanted free speech. Rather than a democratic staging area for rational engagement and debate, free speech has become weaponized.

Political Actors Use Free Speech To Gain Power and Then Seek To Suppress It.  Political actors seeking power are often the most egalitarian when it comes to free speech. They want to include as many like-minded voices as possible to amplify their positions against the elite in power. Paradoxically, as soon as those out of power assume leadership all bets are off. The egalitarian calls for a vocal opposition and free press are replaced by policies that suppress free speech. Among many examples, authoritarian regimes are adept at managing the internet so that only the “party line” is communicated to the public.

The Use of Militant Democracy to Suppress Free Speech. The phrase  “militant democracy” became the term for a modern position on free speech that developed in the United Kingdom and throughout the EU. The paradox of the policy is that democratic governments seek to deny basic free speech to those citizens who reject certain democratic values.  In recent years, militant democracy has been employed: to prohibit the manipulation of election information; ban right wing anti-immigrant and antidiscrimination organizations; arrest citizens for hateful posts on the internet; institute a ban on wearing veils; and to expand the laws against hate speech. The problem is that authoritarian regimes have quickly latched onto these bans and prohibitions in democratic Europe to justify their own draconian policies against free speech.

The Promise and Negative Effects of New Information Technologies. New inventions that spread information in unexpected ways have always started with the promise of advancing free speech before causing unintended disruptions. This was true of the printing press, which encouraged the illiterate to learn to read, which led to the reformation, which led to a century of violent repression and sectarian warfare. The proliferation of untrue but convincing political pamphlets helped stoke the French Revolution, which quickly turned from unfettered free speech to a repressive affair.

The World Wide Web was first heralded as positive free speech for the masses. This egalitarian goal has morphed into a discussion of how to promote safety and prevent harm by limiting internet based speech. We are in the early days of the digital age with further disruptions to free speech (beyond limitations on Facebook, Google and Twitter) yet to come. The paradox is that it is difficult to shield the masses from hateful content and disinformation without sacrificing the liberal values of free speech.

I will end with some encouraging words from Jacob Mchangama, who summarized portions of his important new book in an article in the March/April 2022 addition of Foreign Affairs Magazine, The War on Free Speech, Censorship’s Global Rise, as follows.

“The free-speech recession must be resisted by people around the world who have benefited from the revolutionary acts and sacrifices of the millions who came before them and fought for the cherished right to speak one’s mind. It is up to those who already enjoy that right to defend the tolerance of heretical ideas, limit the reach of disinformation, agree to disagree without resorting to harassment or hate, and treat free speech as a principle to be upheld universally rather than a prop to be selectively invoked for narrow, tribalistic point-scoring.”

 

 

 

 

 

NATIONAL ATTENTION FOR PA ELECTIONS

For those willing to get involved in political campaigns, there has never been a better opportunity to make a difference at the national level. The main event is the most closely watched Senate race in the country. Whichever party replaces Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey could well determine control of the Senate for the remainder of the Biden presidency.

The scramble by Republican candidates to replace Toomey has provided juicy, soap-opera drama in recent months. Early on, former President Trump endorsed Sean Parnell in the Senate primary. In late November 2021, Parnell suspended his campaign after a judge ruled against him in a custody battle. Credible testimony had included allegations that he physically and verbally abused his wife and children.

Smelling blood in the water, two wealthy sharks swam into Pennsylvania and announced their intent to run in the Senate Republican primary. First, television celebrity and former heart surgeon, Mehmet Oz, entered the fray with few political credentials and fewer ties to Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz apparently believes that, like Donald Trump, his smiling face and huckster demeanor will win the day.

Not to be outdone, former hedge fund manager David McCormick appeared on scene with an exploratory committee and vast amounts of media ad buys. He then made it official by entering the race to take on Oz. Like his opponent, McCormick has no political experience, few recent ties to Pennsylvania but deep pockets. He is portraying himself in commercials as a folksy farmer who can defeat the Democratic socialists and "woke" mob.

While these two Republican candidates continue to slice each other with vicious attack ads, the primary contest on the Democratic side is more sedate. The two "top-tier" primary candidates are Congressman Conor Lamb and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. Both respect each other as elected officials. Their policy positions are similar, and the only question in the primary is who is more electable. Lamb's advantage is that he won a congressional seat in a pro-Trump district while Fetterman has won a statewide contest. The general election will be the most expensive Senate campaign in Pennsylvania history.

This year offers the rare occasion when a Pennsylvania Senate and governor's race appear on the same ballot. The stakes are high. If a Republican wins it will give the party control of both legislative chambers and the executive office. The sole Democratic candidate to replace Gov. Tom Wolf is Attorney General Josh Shapiro. In a surprise move Shapiro has already endorsed a Black state lawmaker from Allegheny County, Austin Davis, for lieutenant governor. This gives him geographic and racial diversity on his ticket.

In the Republican primary for governor, it is difficult to pick a frontrunner where there are at least five viable candidates. Recently, Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman may have separated himself from the pack by bringing Trump loyalist Kellyanne Conway on to his campaign staff.

In the background a host of other significant political issues are swirling around and building to a crescendo. Regarding district election boundaries, there has been a yearlong period of public hearings and political posturing. The result will determine the "once-a-decade" final composition of Pennsylvania's legislative and congressional district election maps. Non-partisan rationality and compromise have failed. The Republican Legislature and Democratic governor cannot reach an agreement compelling the appellate courts to again decide the final district maps. Due to candidate filing deadlines, if the courts do not act quickly, the May primary could be delayed.

Former President Trump's unprecedented challenge to his 2020 election loss (the big lie) has spilled over into a furious debate of whether Pennsylvania election laws should be changed to favor Trump positions in future elections. The same Republican elected officials who passed legislation to make it easier to vote before Trump became president have now reversed course and proposed procedures that would narrow voter participation.

If a Republican is elected governor, these ballot box limitations will easily pass. If a Democrat is elected, Republicans plan to introduce constitutional amendments to change election laws. These changes would include requiring "government-issued identification" to vote and require the state auditor general to review elections and voter rolls for accuracy, even when there are no improprieties.

Last week, Commonwealth Court, along party lines, upheld a Republican challenge to Pennsylvania's highly successful vote by mail procedures. Mail-in ballots helped President Joe Biden win the state by some 80,000 votes. The questionable ruling held that Article VII section 14 of our state constitution requires citizens to vote in person unless they have a specific excuse. Wolf immediately filed an appeal. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority, will now decide whether there is access to mail-in ballots in future elections.

In order to stay current on all of these fast-moving developments, there is no better source than the nonpartisan Spotlight PA, a collaborative newsroom dedicated to producing investigative journalism. It regularly appears in newspapers throughout the state and features updates on political topics of interest in the commonwealth.

Gary Stout is a Washington attorney.