RA Board Member Shawn Poulson discusses election integrity
A contribution from Shawn Poulson, Board Member and Maryland Correspondent for Republican Atheists, as well as Chair of Kent County GOP.
In 2020 the presidential election caused a whirlwind of questions about voter laws and how ballots were counted after election results from counties across the country showed irregular voting patterns.
I became involved in 2023 and started with cast vote record (CVR) research. I was recently featured on a channel hosted by the Maryland Voter Integrity Group where I revealed anomalies in statewide election results from 2022 and 2020 that seem impossible.
Tune into a recording of my discussion at this link.
Election integrity research has been the largest growing grassroots effort I have ever seen. With research groups popping up in all states and broken up into counties and localities, there are people everywhere looking for answers to their findings. Most often, their questions fall on deaf ears in government because officials have their official responses that don’t sufficiently explain or they just call them election deniers. The real path forward is to remove all election machines and then do hand counted paper ballots only, same day voting, photo ID required, and absentee voting only for valid reasons. Maryland did it this way up until the 2014 election. Ever since, the election process has been a black box.
For instance, researchers have discovered:
- A sharp increase in “blank ballots” cast from 2020 to 2022, which have no markings on them at all. Are these disenfranchised voters due to machine malfunction or fraudulent activity? How could a county go from 1 or 2 in 2020 to thousands in 2022?
- My CVR research confirms patterns seen in other states. Every race in every county shows a pattern of an immediate boost to Democrat candidates in the beginning of the election, then another boost at the end when the last of the mail-in ballots are counted. Judging by the tail-end boost alone, this has flipped six races in my county and 54 races statewide in 2022.
- Our state is a member of ERIC, which is a third party vendor that has direct access to our centralized state voter roll database. Their promise is to clean voter rolls such as when a voter moves out of state. We suspect they are a scheme used to boost Democrat registrations because they offer tools to identify eligible but not yet registered voters and they sell that list to Democrat affiliated non-profits. Lots of red states have withdrawn from ERIC once they figured out there were problems and it wasn’t necessarily improving voter rolls.
- And another important issue to keep an eye out on: The State Board of Election administration is hiding audit logs generated by the ballot tabulators. Public records law requires disclosing any records generated while serving the public so long as they don’t include secrets or personal information. Additionally, state regulation requires generating audit logs. Audit logs show simple ballot tabulator activity, such as times when votes are cast, any errors encountered, and machine configuration details.They’ve released audit logs for some counties. But, in response to my request for the remaining counties I received a bill for over $2,200 before they’ll retrieve those records, which seems excessive. This says their election system hasn’t been designed to make this operation a simple download despite all the existing technology that consolidates all logs into a single physical location at the State Board of Election office.
So you can see why election integrity is such a big deal. It’s been my primary focus since last year.
The state has also used legislative powers to thwart well intentioned election integrity researchers. Recently, Governor Moore signed into law HB0333, a bill that makes misinformation/disinformation out the election a crime and that includes disputing election results. This is particularly in poor taste now that we’ve seen several situations recently in blue states, such as New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, where Democrat candidates committed fraud against candidates from their own party. With this new law, I would be at risk of prosecution if I were to discuss any evidence I have about fraud schemes being employed in my state or election results being inaccurate. I suspect this may include chatting about it in private social media groups.
These issues will end democracy. And when Democrats are the only party in power, they will STILL lie, cheat, and steal elections amongst themselves. Recently in blue states, such as New Jersey and Connecticut, Democrat candidates were found to be committing fraud against candidates from their own party in local elections.
I suggest forming an election integrity group within Republican Atheists to focus on discussing the issues. Since 2020, there are election integrity groups forming in every state. One quick start is the Election Integrity Network (EIN). They have weekly and monthly Zoom meetings on various topics and there’s always something new to discuss. From there, you may find other groups operating locally in your own state. I encourage members of Republican Atheists to seek out those leaders and see where they can contribute.
Photo credit: Edmond Dantès.
