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.