The media took a hammering during the November 19 press briefing hosted by President Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, over continued claims that no evidence of widespread electoral fraud exists. The former mayor of New York City, along with attorney Sidney Powell and Mr. Trump's campaign legal advisor, Jenna Ellis, presented reporters with a small sample of the allegedly nonexistent evidence they had gathered. This legal team claims to have much more and, in the coming days, the American people will surely learn what they do have. Will it be enough, though? The president's representatives must show that disputes over election results in various states involve a number of votes sufficient to reverse races already assumed to have been won by Joe Biden.
What, if any, avenues to success exist for the incumbent, then? His attorneys have witness statements – affidavits – from thousands of Americans, reportedly, who witnessed irregularities in the counting of ballots as well as in the voting process itself.
Rudy Giuliani
How much weight do these affidavits carry, though – even if thousands of them exist? A stronger legal challenge may rest upon another issue; the Constitution's equal protection clause. More impactful still would be Trump's attorneys' ability to provide evidence that ballot-counting software was manipulated to add or delete votes or switch some votes from the president to his opponent. After all, the software in question was widely used across the U.S. If it is proven to be easily manipulated, then tens of thousands of votes, or more, could be called into question.
Sworn Affidavits
Witness testimonies describe various seemingly nefarious activities. From an observer in Georgia, one such sworn statement, submitted as part of a legal action in that state, describes large numbers of ballots all bearing "perfect black bubbles" against Joe Biden's name – none of them were marked for Trump. The observer noticed this same phenomenon in two separate locations. He also stated: "I also saw absentee ballots for Trump inserted into Biden's stack and were counted as Biden votes. This occurred a few times." The affidavit lists several other irregularities. The observer stated that he is a registered Democrat.
Another sworn affidavit, submitted as evidence in the same Georgia case, mentions similarly-marked ballots for Biden, as though they had been "machine stamped." That observer had made a note of the batch numbers and printed them out on a spreadsheet, noting that these apparently manufactured votes were "95 – 100% for Biden for most of them."
Trump's attorneys have established that in certain states – including Pennsylvania – ballots in some counties were subjected to different standards of verification than those in other counties. Some were tossed because signatures could not be verified, while, in other counties, signatures were not verified at all. The president's attorneys argue that this practice violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. Although a similar argument prevailed in the Bush v. Gore case, the situation in this election is not quite as simple since, this time around, the votes in question are a mix of mail-in and in-person ballots – not necessarily a case of "similarly situated" persons being treated differently.
Deliberate Security Flaws in Counting Machines?
The strongest case for calling election results into question, then, may be the voting machines and tabulation software used throughout the U.S. – but rejected by some states, like Texas, because of the many security flaws. As Giuliani pointed out, even Democrats have in the past expressed concerns over the vulnerability of the system in question.
As recently as 2019, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) described this technology as "prone to security problems." Back in 2006, New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney wanted an investigation into why the equipment and software were being used in America. "As you can imagine, having a foreign government invest in or buy a company that services U.S. elections could raise concerns about the integrity of the elections conducted by these machines," she wrote to then-Treasury Secretary John Snow.
The technology, provided by Dominion Voting Systems – a company with links to former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez – is "designed to rig elections," according to Powell. That is how she described it in a recent interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. "It should never have been installed anywhere," Powell added.
Giuliani and Powell claim to have testimony from Dominion employees and other experts who claim that the spikes in votes for Joe Biden, which occurred on election night after several key swing states called a halt to their vote-counting, appear highly irregular if not mathematically impossible. On the evening of November 3, Trump had significant leads in each of these states. All of them were using Dominion's election technologies, and all stopped counting at more or less the same time. The next morning, Biden had overcome seemingly insurmountable leads to pull well ahead of the president in each of these states.
As suspicious as this sequence of election night events sounds, though, it is merely circumstantial unless Trump's people can come up with proof that something nefarious was happening. Affidavits may constitute evidence, but they do not, by themselves, prove anything. The president's attorneys need something more compelling and less open to question. Do they really have it, or are they blowing smoke, hoping to somehow muddy the waters and hold out for someone to rule in their favor? Would Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani risk their careers and personal and professional reputations by making claims they could not possibly support? One would think not. During that Fox News interview, Powell told Bartiromo: "I never say anything I can't prove." Very soon, America will find out whether Powell is as good as her word.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
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