Thread by @charles_gaba

Here's an updated version of my "Dem Stop the Steal!" conspiracy theory thread which hopefully is less scattershot.

There's 3 main claims:

1. "How could there be 20M fewer voters than in 2020 w/"record-breaking turnout?"

2. "How could 15M fewer voter for Harris vs. Biden?"

3. "How could so many swing state voters vote for the Dem for Senate but not for Harris for POTUS?"

There's a few others, but these are the biggest ones, so let's tackle them first:

1. There weren't 20M fewer voters.

I've been compiling the data as it's being updated by CNN's tracking center via a Google spreadsheet. As of this writing, total POTUS turnout is ~147.6M, or ~10.8M lower than 2020's 158.4M.

cnn.com/election/2024/…

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

There's still around 8.8 million ballots left to count across over half the states, including over 4 million in CA alone and half a million *apiece* in WA, NY, UT & AZ.

When all of them have been counted, the total will likely be around ~156.4M...just 2M below 2020.

2. Similarly, Harris didn't receive 15M fewer votes than Biden.

She's currently down ~10.4M, with 70.8M votes.

If the remaining 8.8M break out similar to those already counted, she'll have ~75.6M...5.7M fewer votes than Biden. If they break ~10% more in her favor, ~76.0M.

Also note that Trump leads Harris by ~3.7M in the popular vote at the moment (2.5%), and once the remaining ballots are counted will likely only lead by between 1.9M - 2.8M (1.2% - 1.8%).

That's a respectable popular vote win for Trump, but hardly a "landslide" or "mandate."

3. It's not that Dems were voting for Dem Senate candidates but not voting for POTUS...it was that TRUMP voters were voting ONLY for him while leaving Senate blank (or voting for Gallego in AZ).

Across the 5 states, 536K Trump voters didn't vote for the GOP Senate candidate.

As for the "record-breaking turnout!," this was likely true in about 20 states, though @ElectProject is the authority on that.

GA, TN, NC & MI appear to have seen 100K+ apiece higher turnout overall.

HOWEVER, it also looks like ~1.5M *fewer* voted in California, around 337K fewer voted in New York, 252K fewer in IL, 213K fewer in FL, 150K fewer in LA and 139K fewer in MA.

Basically, it was up in 6 of the 7 swing states but down in most of the non-swing states.

In fact, the only swing state where total turnout was likely *down* slightly from 2020?

Pennsylvania...which is also the only swing state Senate race which Dems appear to have lost.

Again, the more obviou, if painful, explanation can be found in stuff like this: Here's national exit polls of 18-29 yr olds from 2020 vs. 2024.

Different polling firms of course, but if the Youth vote really did shift from 60/36 to 52/46, I think that alone would do it.

The other major factor appears to have been the Latino vote, which shifted HARD right this year according to exit polls.

In 2020, CNN had Trump only receiving 32% of the Latino vote.

That's game over.

Re. extremely long lines being reported across many states, remember in 2020 a LOT more people voted absentee/by mail in the states which don't have all-mail voting due to COVID.

Here in MI, this was the first year we even *had* early in-person voting as an option.

We had hundreds of thousands fewer absentee ballots sent in...but hundreds of thousands of people voted early in person instead.

We even had people who converted absentee ballots into early in-person votes instead to make sure it ran it thru the tabulator. My wife & I did that.

As for the drop boxes being set on fire in AZ, WA, OR etc...yes, that happened & is horrific, but I believe that only impacted a few hundred ballots at most.

Bomb threats scaring people off from voting? Sure...but that's voter suppression, not "hacking" or "stealing ballots."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The various Secs of State (Dems in 5 of the 7 swing states, I believe) & their canvassing boards are doing their jobs right now, which I think include spot audits.

If something fishy is up, I presume they'll say so.

I'll also add personal anecdote: I was a poll worker here in MI for both Early Voting and on Election Day. For Early Voting, our location processed 34 precincts across Bloomfield Twp, Birmingham and Southfield Twp.

Here's the results from those precincts this year vs. 2020:

In other words, Harris did win those 34 precincts...but by a lot less than Biden did 4 years ago.

This is also a perfect example of the absentee vs. in person factor. Here's how things broke out in 2020 vs. 2024 in the 34 precincts I was working with this year.

Related: The Early Votes for these 34 precincts totaled 9,046 (+ Stein/RFK/etc). We had 9 days of early voting, so that's around 1,000/day.

Here's the early votes per day for the first 7 days of early voting for the same precincts...7,114, or just over 1,000/day.

I personally worked 5 of the 9 days of early voting, and personally processed around 500 - 550 ballots per day (we had 2 stations set up). Those numbers are accurate.

I worked side by side w/Dem & GOP workers, and can state that at our location there were no shenanigans.

There's a whole slew of stuff that poll workers have to do at the start and end of the day as well as throughout the day to double check to make sure the ballot numbers match the tabulator numbers which match the poll book (laptop) numbers. They matched every day.

Even then, there's a whole bunch of measures taken by the Sec. of State & canvassing boards to make sure the results are legit.

Here's how it works in Michigan:

michigan.gov/sos/elections/…

And yes, that includes risk-limiting audits, which draw and hand-tally a random sample of ballots to affirm the accuracy of vote-counting machines.

Here's more details on how election security is handled in Michigan: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

While I'm at it, here's Pennsylvania's election security website:

pa.gov/en/agencies/vo…

...and again, yes, that includes audits:

pa.gov/en/agencies/vo…

Here's Arizona's election security website:

arizona.vote/secure_electio…

Guess what? @Adrian_Fontes is on the case, and county election officials will be performing post-election audits to make sure everything is kosher:

arizona.vote/sites/default/…

It wouldn't be a bad idea if the Secretaries of State of all 7 swing states issued a joint, bipartisan statement (including a FAQ) to reassure folks that they're doing audits/etc.

cc: @JocelynBenson
@Adrian_Fontes
@CiscoAguilar
@GaSecofState
@Commish_Schmidt

@JocelynBenson @Adrian_Fontes @CiscoAguilar @GaSecofState @Commish_Schmidt (The SoS doesn't administer elections in Wisconsin or North Carolina; they have a 6-person commission in WI & a State Board of Elections in NC)

@WI_Elections
@NCSBE

I'm not saying definitively there were no shenanigans, and I know there's other issues people have mentioned--StarLink, ES&S machines, DeJoy at USPS, etc. I don't have every answer, I'm just saying that there's no evidence from the public data so far that proves hacking/etc.

I'll be posting updates to this thread daily as more numbers come in.

Meanwhile, if you want to help do something constructive, I'd recommend phone banking to cure ballots in AZ, CA, NV & PA to help Bob Casey & several Dem House candidates!

Arizona: mobilize.us/jumpstartaz/ev…

California: mobilize.us/dccc/event/742…

Nevada:
mobilize.us/2024nvvictory/…

Pennsylvania: mobilize.us/mobilize/event…

Update: This doesn't really add much to this thread, but I decided to run the numbers for all of Oakland County, Michigan (which includes the 34 precincts I discussed above), and the results are interesting for one particular reason...

Namely, that Oakland County's total turnout in 2024 was almost identical to 2020, and that the combination of Absentee Voting & Early Voting in 2024 (503,514) is almost identical to Absentee Voting alone in 2020, when we didn't have Early Voting available (511,967). Huh.

Quick Update:

--Harris now down by 3.5M
--Popular vote margin likely down to 1.8M - 2.7M
--Trump could very well fall below 50% in the end

Again, none of this changes the outcome, but worth noting.

Also: Swing state GOP Senate candidates continue to fall further behind. Collectively they're now 550K behind Trump.

I should also note this from @pbump (who still refuses to talk to me & likely still has me muted after I falsely accused him of something, although I later apologized for it):
washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/…

One other small data point: As far as I can tell, Harris still would have lost even if every single 3rd-party voter had voted for her instead.

She would've flipped MI & WI...but not PA. And many of those 3rd party voters voted for Oliver (Lib) or RFK Jr.

Another update:
--Harris down 3.5M vs. Trump, 10.0M vs. Biden
--Likely final gap: 1.8M - 2.6M vs Trump, 5.2 - 5.7M vs. Biden
--Trump still on track to end up at almost exactly 50%

Meanwhile, Bob Casey appears to have shaved 740 votes off his deficit in Pennsylvania...

Here's an updated summary of the likely final turnout in each state compared to 2020.

Again, it looks like turnout surpassed 2020 in 6 of the 7 swing states. The one where it came behind? Pennsylvania...which is also the only state where the Senate Dem is behind.

📣 UPDATE:

--Popular vote gap has shrunk to 3.2M (2.2%)

--Final pop gap will likely be 1.7 - 2.4M (1.1 - 1.6%)

--Harris now 9.5M behind Biden; will likely end up 5.2 - 5.5M behind

--Total turnout now 148.9M w/another ~7.3M still left to count

Meanwhile, Bob Casey is now less than 35K behind in PA, with ~100K ballots still left to count. He'd need over 2/3 of them to break his way to pull off a win.

Collectively, the 5 swing state GOP Senate candidates are now 558K behind Trump.