In this thread I made the argument, from a problem-solving perspective, that ignoring the possibility of out and out corruption of voting machines was, at the very least, a poor intellectual practice. On RawStory Alison Greene makes a similar case, but for Kentucky’s Senatorial race:
In 2017, a Public Policy Polling Survey asked Kentuckians, “Do you approve or disapprove of Senator Mitch McConnell’s job performance?” Only 18% approved. He clawed his rating back up to 39% on the eve of the election. …
So, what exactly drove these angry Kentuckians to reelect Mitch McConnell with a 19-point advantage over opponent Amy McGrath—57.8% to 38.2%?
Even as Republicans across the country still insist that the election was rife with fraudulent Democratic votes, no one’s asking how McConnell managed one of the most lopsided landslides of the Nov. 3 election. They should. An investigation of Kentucky voting results by DCReport raises significant questions about the vote tallies in McConnell’s state.
McConnell racked up huge vote leads in traditionally Democratic strongholds, including counties that he had never before carried.
So how seriously should we take this story? That is, how should we analyze this as a citizen with little to no expertise in voting, polling, and electronic voting systems?
First, let’s figure out which factors seem to be important: the candidates, the opportunities for cheating, the polling, the general atmosphere of Kentucky, and the activities that took place prior to the election that may have swayed the election.
Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is the incumbent candidate and long-time holder of the seat. Senate Majority Leader and one of the most prominent conservative leaders, love him or hate him, he has considerable prestige.
Lt. Colonel Amy McGrath (USMC-Ret), the Democratic challenger, grew up in Kentucky after being born in Ohio, and can be fairly considered to be a Kentucky native. However, a 20 year career in the Marines, in both combat and administrative roles, meant she was not present nor prominent in the state during her service. Military careers are an honored option in American life, but combat roles for women are new and, in some states, controversial or disapproved. That may have tarnished her military career in the eyes of some Kentuckians. She won the Democratic primary by only a few points over State Senator Charles Booker, and as McGrath is White and Booker is Black, this may have discouraged the Black community from voting for her. She has not held an elective seat outside of academic settings, but she has training in the political field in her professional background. That still leaves open the question of why McGrath is qualified for the position of Senator, especially as a junior-level replacement for the most prominent member of the Senate. More information from prior to her primary victory is here. It’s mostly about problems her campaign faced if she won.
In terms of polling, this report on a Mason-Dixon poll, published October 21st (the election is roughly two weeks later), suggests McGrath was in trouble:
A new Mason-Dixon poll shows a significant lead for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in his race for reelection.
According to the poll, the Republican incumbent has support from 51 percent of likely voters. His Democratic challenger, retired Lt. Colonel Amy Mcgrath, has 42 percent support from likely voters. Four percent of likely voters support Libertarian candidate Brad Barron, and three percent said they are undecided. [WSAZ]
Mason-Dixon gets a B+ from FiveThirtyEight. The final result of the general election:
McGrath was down by 9 points two-three weeks prior to the election. The final margin is nearly 20 points. On its own, this margin may merit investigation.
But that leads to context: the atmosphere in Kentucky, those amorphous details, so hard to diagnose from afar (my term for Minnesota) as an independent. In particular, how many McConnell fans chose to lie to pollsters? Enough to shift the margin from 20 to 9?
Another factor is Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, wife of McConnell, who was well-known to be steering excessive amounts of money to Kentucky. To what extent did this influence voters in Kentucky?
Finally, Greene notes that the vote counting machines, in most cases in Kentucky, were from Election Systems & Software. As a citizen with limited time to spend on issues such as this, I chose to look at the Wikipedia page on ES&S, and, as a software engineer, I was troubled by what I saw: remote access software, and presumably hardware, installed on some of their offerings without notice to customers, throughout their history. While these may have been eliminated by the time of the 2020 elections, two questions come to mind – how do I know that’s true for all of their machines, and, more importantly, what other poor and/or malicious design decisions were made by ES&S that may turn out to be security holes?
I also noted that ES&S is owned by McCarthy Group, LLC, which has no Wikipedia entry. Their corporate page is here. Would they be inclined to take the risk of corrupting voting machines? Beats me.
But it’s worth noting that Greene reports ES&S machines were also used in Maine, where incumbent Senator Collins (R-ME) scored an unexpected, and even large, victory over challenger Sara Gideon. On my own, I see that Iowa also uses ES&S, and Senator Ernst (R-IA) scored a 6 point victory over Theresa Greenfield (D-IA) in what was considered to be a toss up race. I suspect 6 points is beyond the margin of error.
What do these observations prove? Nothing of relevance.
But correlation, for a problem-solver, is always of interest. Quite often, it leads nowhere, to coincidence, bad data, bad judgment: nothing actionable.
And, occasionally, it leads to a smoking gun.
It’s all very interesting, and as a software engineer, I’d sure like to have a peek at the code resident in these ES&S products. But it’s also possible to attribute Democratic losses to bad polling, including MAGA and single-issue voters unethically lying to pollsters, mistakes in the last days of the campaigns, Republican campaign propaganda, and a few other factors.
Pragmatically, there’s little chance that any Republican Senator will be deprived of their seat due to Greene’s investigation. Nothing may come of it at all. But keeping an eye out for the opportunity to examine an ES&S machine in situ would be a wise thing to do by Democrats and Republicans alike. An electorate distrustful of the process really serves no one but malevolent forces.
Or we could, like, outlaw voting machines and return to paper-only methods, as has been done in the past. It’d be far more wise.
