Regarding allegations of a rigged 2024 election

CONTEXT

The EAC (Elections Assistance Commission), something I never heard of before, is an independent, bipartisan federal agency established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 in response to the voting equipment and election administration issues highlighted by the 2000 Presidential Election. The EAC's primary mission is to help Americans participate in the voting process and assist election officials in improving the administration of elections. It serves as a national clearinghouse and resource for information on election administration.

The EAC is composed of four commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Advisory Bodies include a Board of Advisors, a Standards Board, a Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), and the Local Leadership Council (LLC). EAC staff is led by an executive director and general counsel, with its own Office of Inspector General (that IG is apparently not yet fired by DJT in his purge of inspector generals).

A rigged election? Maybe

Investigative journalist Greg Palast who has a reputation as a credible reporter about election irregularities claims that he analyzed EAC and other data from various public records. He concludes that (1) Harris lost the 2024 election due to massive voter suppression, and (2) absent that, she would have won the election. Palast's reporting alleges these data points and conclusions:

Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won.

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Here are key numbers:

• 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
• By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
• No less than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
• At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
• 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
• 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.

Palast gets his numbers in part by extrapolating data from past election irregularities and projects that onto the 2024 election. He shows a map of states that passed voter restriction laws from 2021 until just before the 2024 election, based on data the Brennan Center collected, which is at this link. 

I checked Palast's credibility with Perplexity:

Q: Is investigative reporter Greg Palast credible when he alleges that the Elections Assistance Committee found suppression of over 4.7 million votes in the 2024 elections? I cannot find a public report by the EAC with this data in it, can you?

A: Background: Greg Palast is a well-known investigative journalist with a history of reporting on election irregularities and voter suppression. He has worked for reputable outlets like the BBC and The Guardian, and his work has often focused on exposing systemic issues in electoral processes.

Conclusion:

Credibility: Greg Palast's credibility as an investigative journalist in the realm of election integrity is well-established. His claims are often backed by detailed analysis and investigation, though they might not always align perfectly with publicly available data due to the complexity of election data and the timing of official reports.

Data Availability: While the EAC does provide extensive data on election administration, the specific figure of 4.7 million votes suppressed might not be found in a single public report. Palast's number could be a synthesis of various data points, possibly including data not yet released or detailed in public reports.

In summary, while Greg Palast's claims are credible based on his history and expertise, the specific data he references might not be directly available in public EAC reports due to the timing of data release and the complexity of election data aggregation. His assertions should be viewed as part of a broader investigation into voter suppression, requiring further scrutiny and cross-referencing with official data when it becomes available.

Is Palast right about this? I don't know. Maybe. Based on reporting from several sources just after the election, I got the feeling something was seriously wrong. Several analysts were voicing concerns about vote irregularities they found. I think Palast was one of them, but if I recall right he wasn't the only one.

One thing that was clear to me was that Republicans in red state governments wanted to rig the 2024 election. Evidence of that was that they acted to do so by passing restrictive laws. Passing laws is fact, not opinion. Another thing that was clear, Republicans in red state governments where chronic liars, just like DJT. I considered their assertions of "election integrity" to be lies.  

Because I had no trust in elections in states with Republican legislatures, I wrote to both of my Senators, my representative in the House, and on 3 occasions, the Harris campaign. I asked for a detailed analysis of voter and election data in at least several battleground states to confirm either that there were no significant irregularities, or that there was solid evidence of significant irregularities. Not surprisingly, none of my requests for an aggressive inquiry were acted on. 

Democrats don't fight for democracy, they just talk the talk, sort of. Sometimes. And the Dems wonder why they lost the election? Maybe they lost because they didn't want to win bad enough. Seems plausible to me.

Q: Basedd on his deranged public health crackpottery and enraged revenge lust (he hates Fauci, and literally wants him murdered), DJT has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (NIH, CDC, etc.) to basically stop communication with the public about important public health matters. So the question is, about how long will it be before he orders the EAC to shup up, remove its publicly available data and fire its inspector general? 

My guess, EAC data will disappear and its IG fired within the next two weeks. But that's speculative, just a personal assessment.