All eyes are on the ongoing forensic audit in Arizona despite fierce Democrat resistance:
Other audits are likely in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. But is there something else that has been overlooked in the frenzy to investigate or suppress (depending on one’s political persuasions) claims of “election irregularities” during the 2020 election? Retired senior DoD analyst Ray Blehar has examined an underreported election story pertaining to write-in and minor party ballots/votes. His investigation has resulted in some startling conclusions and a working theory: that Biden’s margin of victory in several key states could have been provided by shifting write-in and minor party ballots through ballot adjudication.
Let us examine his statistical analysis and conclusions in more detail. First, a definition of terms:
Write-in ballots. These are ballots marked by voters who choose to vote for a candidate other than those listed on the printed ballots.
Minor party ballots. These are ballots marked for candidates of minor parties who were qualified to be on the election slate, such as the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party. Approved minor party candidates will vary by state, depending on qualification requirements.
WIMP. This is an acronym that stands for the sum of write-in and minor party ballots in a given state.
Adjudication. This is a manual process by which the “intent of the individual voter” is determined when a given ballot cannot be determined by automated tabulation devices. Adjudicated ballots are typically write-in ballots, mismarked ballots (double votes), misaligned ballots, and other categories. Note: it is also possible to program voting machines in order to recognize a “straight party” ballot as misaligned and automatically sending it to the manual adjudication process. Adjudication is really where the vote shifting happens, particularly if the election officials in a given precinct are all from one political party and/or vote shifting malware has “infected” tabulation devices.
I have previously summarized his analyses of WIMP votes in Pennsylvania here and in Wisconsin here. Blehar’s findings from his Pennsylvania analysis include the following:
- The total number of WIMP votes in Pennsylvania declined by ~113,000 votes from 2016 to 2020. This is highly unlikely given the massive number of mail-in ballots cast in 2020 compared to previous elections.
- Only 453 write-in votes were received by mail-in ballot out of 2.6 million mail-in ballots cast. This is an improbably low number given that Howie Hawkins, the Green Party write-in presidential candidate, received ~34,000 fewer votes by mail-in than down-ballot Green Party average. Note that a similar situation occurred with Jill Stein in 2016 in Pennsylvania, causing her to refer to the Keystone State’s election system as a “national disgrace.”
- Jo Jorgenson, the Libertarian candidate for president, received ~20,000 votes fewer by mail-in than down-ballot Libertarian candidates. This is a highly unlikely circumstance and a historical anomaly that strongly suggests vote shifting took place.
- Vote-switching analysis determined that ~64,000 absentee ballot votes were taken from Trump and switched to Biden through the adjudication process, while ~30,000 Trump Election Day and absentee votes were directly shifted to Biden.
Blehar believes the following happened:
- Conclusion #1: The total adjudication manipulation resulted in Biden winning the state by ~80,500 votes, but in reality, President Trump actually won Pennsylvania by over 186,000 votes.
- Conclusion #2: Biden’s margin of victory could have only been obtained through adjudication manipulation.
Blehar’s findings from his Wisconsin analysis include findings similar to those in Pennsylvania:
- The total number of WIMP votes cast in Wisconsin declined by 132,307 votes from 2016 to 2020
- There were no WIMP votes tabulated during the infamous early morning ballot spike on 4 November. Based on historical comparisons, there should have been approximately 10,000 WIMP votes during that ballot spike.
- Howie Hawkins, the Green Party presidential candidate, received only 1,089 write-in votes compared to the 31,072 votes received by the 2016 Green Party candidate. This is highly suspicious and an indication of probable ballot adjudication manipulation. Note that Stein made similar allegations of machine miscounts in 2016.
- The total missing (improperly adjudicated) WIMP ballots in Dane and Milwaukee counties was approximately 33,000 votes, with the rest of the missing 132K WIMP votes scattered in other counties across the state.
- Conclusion: the “missing” WIMP votes that were adjudicated to Biden almost certainly provided his ~20K margin of victory in the state of Wisconsin.
Blehar has examined the national implications of missing WIMP votes and their likely mis-adjudication here. First, he provided a summary table comparing 2020 results with 2016:
As the table shows, Biden received over 15 million more votes than Hillary Clinton did while President Trump exceeded his 2016 vote total by over 11 million votes (unprecedented for a presidential reelection campaign in which he also received the highest percentage of non-white votes of any Republican candidate since 1960). The Democrat popular vote margin over President Trump increased by ~4.2 million votes from 2016 to 2020 while the WIMP vote from 2016 to 2020 decreased by nearly the same amount (~4.3 million). The similarity of the numbers is highly suspicious.
Here are some of his other national-level findings and conclusions:
- Despite an increase in nationwide voter turnout of over 30 million from 2016 to 2020, there were three times fewer write-in votes in 2020 than in 2016. This makes no sense, especially given that Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Wisconsin relegated the Green Party to write-in status in their states.
- Across the country, write-in votes fell from 698,990 in 2016 to just 217,465 in 2020, with an impossibly low 13,803 of those votes coming from absentee ballots. Since nearly 48 million absentee ballots were cast in 2020, this means that only .00029% of absentee voters wrote in a candidate for President. This is highly unlikely, given that in 2016, scattered write-in ballots accounted for .05% of the total vote.
- In Pennsylvania, Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins received just 611 votes overall (absentee ballots plus in-person votes) compared to other Green party statewide candidates who each received over 70,000 votes. Biden’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania was 80,555, which is remarkably close to the potential number of “missing” Green Party (write-in) presidential votes.
- In Georgia, the decline in the write-in votes from 2016 to 2020 (~20,000) was also greater than Biden’s margin of victory (~12,600) in 2020.
- In Arizona, Trump’s victory margin in 2016 was 91,234 votes, but in 2020, the margin was almost completely erased by the decline in minor party votes from 2016 (89,207).
- Also in Arizona, the 2020 Biden victory margin was less than the decline in write-in votes from 2016. Biden won the state by approximately 10,000 votes while the number of write-in votes declines by nearly 17,000.
- The decline in write-in votes from 2016 to 2020 in Wisconsin (~27,000) could easily account for Biden’s margin of victory in the state (~20,000).
- Conclusion #1: the massive decline in write-in votes from 2016 to 2020 likely points to a nationwide, systemic issue that was shifting votes through the adjudication process.
- Conclusion #2: forensic audits of paper ballots and the ballot images are needed to determine what actually happened in 2020.