August 08, 2016
Fox News commentator and radio host Sean Hannity isn't quite through instigating in Philadelphia after his much-publicized Wawa imbroglio during the Democratic National Convention. This time around, he got himself a piece of a local election inspector.
Hannity ranks among the conservatives who have latched onto Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's warning that the 2016 election — and the media's coverage of it — will be rigged against him.
"And I'm telling you, November 8, we'd better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged," Trump recently told Hannity in one of several references to presumed voter fraud. "And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it's going to be taken away from us."
As Trump's assertion spread far and wide, CNN host Brian Stelter ran a segment reviewing reactions from many who immediately dismissed the notion as preposterous. Hannity, Stelter said, should have pressed Trump for evidence of probable voter fraud.
Essay: Trump is sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election. It's dangerous. Press has a duty to challenge him https://t.co/V6CCyZIfdF
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 7, 2016
That's when Hannity dug up a 2012 article from the Philadelphia Inquirer highlighting Mitt Romney's absolute strikeout against Barack Obama in 59 of the city's voting divisions. The GOP candidate didn't receive a single recorded vote in any of those divisions, which together account for about 3.5 percent of Philadelphia's 1,687 ward subsets.
"These are the kind of numbers that send Republicans into paroxysms of voter-fraud angst," the Inquirer noted at the time, "but such results may not be so startling after all."
When FactCheck.org examined the claim in 2013, it noted that the outcome in those divisions was not a "mathematical and statistical impossibility," as some Romney supporters argued.
Bothered by the accusation, Philadelphia election inspector Ryan Godfrey took to Twitter to destroy Hannity's argument in 24 tweets. (Disclaimer: Tweets contain some explicit language.)
1. I'm an inspector of elections for a Philly voting division. Independent but was a Republican as recently as June. https://t.co/pd82mOkEKh
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
2. People like me sign off on election results in every division in Philly. We take job seriously: certifying the accurate will of people.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
3. Claim that 59 divisions in Philadelphia engaged in electoral fraud in 2012 because no votes for Romney is absurd & personally insulting.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
4. First, there's absolutely no way to erase votes from the machines we use in this city.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
5. I've had to tell this to several parents who took kids into booth w/ them & said kids pressed VOTE button too early. Sorry, no do-overs.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
6. Next, we get a paper tally at the end of the night that we match against physical count of voters who used machines (like an odometer).
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
7. We match that against the count of the individual names of voters who have signed our rolls (and whose names we also recorded in books).
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
8.It's this paper tally we certify, display publicly & send downtown (along w/ data cartridge w/ same info) to be added to overall results.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
9. So, where is the opportunity for fraud, if I and my four or five colleagues of different parties are doing our jobs and not colluding?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
10. (And if we were colluding, we would be colluding to add votes—again, votes can't be subtracted.)
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
11. Incidentally, poll workers have colluded to get machine count to match voter count, but it's rare & prosecuted. https://t.co/7fbUzLnTQO
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
12. So, # of votes corresponds with # of voters, & can't be tampered with after fact, but what about having machines change R votes to D?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
13. It's a liability of Philadelphia's touch-screen voting machines that I can't say for certain that votes can't be switched in software.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
14. It's theoretically possible the Democrats that for all intents control Philly politics have surreptitiously installed
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
15. sophisticated firmware on some? all? voting machines to change some votes from R to D or whatever.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
BUT.
BUT:
16. Why would they ever change *ALL* R votes to D votes, when anybody who voted R could easily refute the results just by saying they had?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
17. It would be idiotic to do so! And indeed in 59 divisions with no recorded votes for Romney,
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
18. The Philadelphia Inquirer couldn't find anyone who cast a vote for Romney. Anyone. https://t.co/5hmtwwP1wi
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
19. Finally, Romney got 6.6% of the vote in my racially mixed middle-class West Philly division. 43 votes out of 653.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
20. How many votes should Romney have expected in those 59 almost entirely poor and almost entirely black communities w/ <1% registered Rs?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
21. (Running against the first black president, with very high approval ratings in the community?)
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
22. Are you thinking like 100 votes in those 59 divisions? Because stealing those 100 votes would be extremely risky and stupid.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
23. And, you know, not such a great return on your highly illegal and risky activities in a city where 700,000 votes were cast.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
24. So yeah, fuck off very much w/ your 2012 Philly election fraud accusations. It didn't happen then & it won't happen this year, says me.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
As NPR points out, Trump isn't exactly the first politician to allege voter fraud. In 2008, John McCain suggested the same forces were at work for Obama under the aegis of ACORN. Going back to 2000, we all remember the Supreme Court's decision to halt a labyrinthine Florida recount and rule George W. Bush POTUS. Even in 1996, Bob Dole accused Bill Clinton of trying to grant legal status to immigrants just in time for the election.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has characterized Trump's "pathetic" remarks as a threat to the peaceful political transitions on which American democracy depends, no matter who wins and loses.
Even for a reflexive conspiracy theorist like Trump, this is pathetic. It's dangerous, too.https://t.co/hcd4kQ4VS9
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) August 2, 2016
Others have contended that the "rigging" occurred throughout the Democratic primary process by shutting out Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
@brianstelter so Sir in your op it's not unpatriotic that the DNC rigged the primary against #Bernie? Damn another reason not to watch CNN
— Heather (@CTFleaMarkets) August 8, 2016
But in the general election? As Ari Berman examines in detail for The Washington Post, Trump's fear that loose voter ID laws will sway the results is based on a premise that federal courts have just struck down in six states.
"The real threat of election-rigging lies not in the small number of voting irregularities, which Trump and many Republicans have blown wildly out of proportion," Berman writes, "but in the much larger number of people disenfranchised by new voting restrictions."
