The Sweep: Don’t Trust The Exits. Do Trust the Vote!

What you need to know to understand both exit polls and claims of voter fraud.

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I’ve worked on three presidential campaigns, but most relevant to today’s discussion is my work in 2012 as the national Election Day operations manager for Mitt Romney’s run. As part of the legal team, it was my job to work with the state staff in the top half-dozen battleground states to ensure they were prepared for Election Day and any potential legal proceedings afterward if we needed to contest the results. 

So with Election Day behind us, it’s time to dissect this year’s results—what we know and what we don’t. And whether we can trust the vote. Let’s dig in …

First, I have already chastised David French for relying on exit polls, but it’s important to explain why even raccoons turn down this hot garbage.

There are three reasons. And I’ve asked pollster and FOTS (Friend of The Sweep) Kristen Soltis Anderson to help out.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Kevinonline

    Sarah, when are you publishing a new column, or is my refresh function not working?

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      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      Ha! It hasn’t even been a week! (Tomorrow or Tuesday morning)

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        Kevinonline

        (Thanks)

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    Xsearnold

    Regarding the increased percentage of Hispanic voters in Osceola County, is this an actual increase or merely a relocation of voters from elsewhere in the state? Wouldn’t you need to know this in order for this data point to have significance?

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      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      You mean moving in from outside the US? No not at all. What we want to study are changing behaviors and in this case you have a Hispanic folks moving into a county and then the county starts to trend more republican. KSA has a good piece on it: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/a-tale-of-two-counties-shows-a-path-forward-for-the-gop%3f_amp=true

      “Osceola County is where the lingering economic devastation of the 2008 financial crisis is still ever-present, with its strip of affordable tourist motels still housing many of those who would otherwise be homeless (as depicted in the film The Florida Project). For many Puerto Rican families fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Maria, Osceola County became home.”

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        Xsearnold

        No I meant moving into Osceola county from another county (or counties) in Florida (or for that matter, moving out of Osceola county and reducing the denominator). Essentially, is this influx simply an offset from other Florida counties rather than a net increase of Hispanic Republican voters statewide?

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    Clifford from WA

    Congrats on the NYT shout out this morning (although I suppose it could actually damage your conservative cred 😝)

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      Angie

      Yeah, I saw that too...

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  4. Mathew A

    Excellent article, in particular part on voter fraud

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    Sad Trombone

    Everything Trump Touches Dies, including legitimate concerns about voter fraud. I think it can still be shown that there is a critical mass of people in positions of authority on the left who feel they would be pursuing a higher good by changing the outcome of an election. Sen. Thune of South Dakota beat Senate Majority Leader Daschle in a presidential election year. The reason was two years earlier he was "defeated" by less than 500 votes in the midterms. All counties had reported except the three that make up the Sioux Reservation, who's votes were submitted several hours late and came in over 150% larger total than any prior election, and this was a midterm. Likewise Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by 312 votes, and evidence of Keith Ellison working with imams in the Somali community to register by being vouched for by another person if you had no ID or proof of citizenship or residence was well known. James O'Keefe's Project Veritas has video of Ilhan Omar's machine registering voters eight to an apartment on a neighbor's vouching in this year's election as well.

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      Dan

      Proof for your allegations, please?

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        Sad Trombone

        You could start here:

        https://www.projectveritas.com/news/ilhan-omar-connected-cash-for-ballots-voter-fraud-scheme-corrupts-elections/

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          Angie

          Project veritas isn't known for being an honest or accurate source...they have been caught manipulating videos to fit their narrative

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            Sad Trombone

            They are tabloid/yellow journalist types, and have to be taken with several grains of salt, but they are the only outfit chasing stories that would win awards if the political bias of the MSM was reversed.

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    Chany Ockert

    Could you in the Sweep or the FactCheck team have a page that is a running summary of the election lawsuits and results? When I hear the vague narrative from Trump supporters with the hope that one of the lawsuits is successful, I'd like to point or provide a fact-based summary.

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    Patrick Brennan

    All of which (Re vote tampering) makes perfect sense, but is useless in attempting to discuss the topic rationally with a Tuckerized Trump true believer.

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    Collin

    Appreciate the insight, Sarah. I've all of these claims and now, I know why my skepticism was warranted. I just wanted to add one more tidbit. If someone manage to get onto a voting machine software designed to artificially alter the machine's vote count and the precinct with that machine was incompetent/shady enough to buy a machine/machines from a company who vanishes from the earth immediately after election, the code on that machine could be decompiled and examined and the electronics reverse engineered. Assuming the examiner understands how voting machines should work, they would find malicious elements in the software. The point is that stealing an election electronically, in the way described, would be very hard to do without getting caught, even with the shadiest the precinct imaginable.

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  9. Tom Maraffa

    I have lived in Mahoning County Ohio since 1985 where I have taught at Youngstown State. Based on my observations there are several reasons why the county flipped red. 1. I originally thought that the union voters for Trump in 2016 were soft. It turns out they werent. They remind me of Cleveland Browns fans. The more they are vilified for being idiots for supporting the pathetic Browns the more they double town. Too much emotional investment to turn away from. 2. Mahoning County has been governed by mini Trumps for decades whether it be corrupt Democratic Politicians or union leaders. The corruption and personal behavior of Trump was no different than what they have been used to and are desensitived to. 3. The disaffection with the establishment has been building since at least the Viet Nam war. The working class suffered disproportionately through that war; the deindustrialization that resulted in the collapse of the steel economy; global trade agreements; the housing crisis; the restructuring of the automobile industry. While Trump ran as a Republican he was not seen as one in the traditional sense and Clinton/Biden were seen as the symbols of the group that was responsible for all of the above. There was nothing shy about them and they arent coming back soon.

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      Angie

      Hello fellow Ohian...( Lorain County)

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  10. Joe1776

    Sounds like people should just chill out and let the court process run it’s course.

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