Cherry Picking the Data

October 8, 2014

How Democracy NC Twisted Data to Defend a Fraud-Friendly Law

Oct 8, 2014–Raleigh, NC–The Voter Integrity Project, today released their final assessment of a “research” report released in September by the George Soros-backed activist group, Democracy NC. in an effort to manipulate public opinion by claiming the North Carolina legislature’s elimination of a certain fraud-friendly provision in NC election law was somehow the reason for 400 voters being “denied a chance to have their voices heard.”

The VIP response, called “The Devil is in the Details,” was written by VIP Research Director, John Pizzo, a quality engineer with a Six Sigma Blackbelt and more than 30 years experience in private industry continuous process improvement. The response pulled no punches in calling their work “deception at the basest level.”D-NC_Prop

“[T]hey hand-selected only those voters they wished to include in their sample,” he said, [and then] concluded, based on a biased statistic deliberately contrived to give you, the reader, a distorted view of reality that the election reform’s elimination of same day registration is somehow designed to adversely affect non-whites.”

 

The response featured tables that compared the 452 voters Democracy NC sampled with the 964 voters the group ignored. Pizzo suggested the omission of so many voters had the effect of misleading the public on the law’s effect.

“They tried to use the unapproved ballots to claim that race was the driving factor,” Pizzo said, “but they ignored the opposite effect that same methodology had on the approved ballots.”

For example, while 27.1% of the approved ballots belonged to voters identifying themselves as black, only 19% of all voters actually were black. Using the same reasoning that Democracy NC used on unapproved ballots, one could claim there was a bias in favor of black voters in the provisional ballot approvals.

“Are we to conclude that the new law eliminating same day registration somehow boosted the approval rate for black voters?” Pizzo asked. “We think not. Neither should you.”

The original Democracy NC “research” included the twelve most emotionally manipulative cases of people whose votes were not counted, the group asserted, because the practice of registering and voting on the same day (called SDR voting) had been outlawed by the most recent General Assembly.

The VIP response included a case-by-case analysis that Jay DeLancy conducted after investigating the details surrounding each specific voter’s problem and then consulting with other election officials familiar with the practices and training required (and funded) by the state.

“Every single one of their selected victims had at least two other factors involved in their not getting to vote,” said DeLancy. “Each example involved either personal negligence by the voter or negligence by an official from another government organization or both. Some may even point to criminal behavior.”

Democracy NC glossed over the details of such systematic failures, and used selected aspects of their stories to support reinstatement of SDR voting, which is a provision that both the Voter Integrity Project and most professional election administration officials agree is too permissive of fraudulent voting.

“Same Day Registration does not allow enough time for the county boards of election to verify that the person voting is actually eligible to vote,” said DeLancy, “which is why it has been eliminated in North Carolina and is not permitted in most other states. At its peak, 14 states allowed it, but now only eight states are either too irresponsible or too corrupt to care that same-day registration invites wholesale election fraud.”

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Please click here to read John Pizzo’s response to Democracy NC’s “research” on same-day registration.

Please click here to read Jay DeLancy’s case-by-case analysis of the 12 voters used by Democracy NC to manipulate public opinion.

Brace for Bad 4th Circuit Ruling

September 29, 2014

“NC Vote suppression Laws Struck Down by Federal Judges.”

At least, that’s how those McClatchy “news” papers describe laws designed to reduce vote fraud and equalize the rights of all citizens seeking free elections; but even sadder, that will be the gist of their “news” reports. North Carolina’s trial of the century will probably suffer this setback along the way, but don’t be discouraged! There is reason for optimism.

This ugly assessment began two days after a three-judge panel for the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit court heard oral arguments in Charlotte. That was when yours truly was finally able to debrief a few attorneys who were more accustomed (than I) to Thursday’s proceedings . . . and it wasn’t pretty.

The judges, Henry F. Floyd, Diana Gribbon Motz, and James A. Wynn Jr. (all elevated by Democratic Presidents) were contentious to both sides of the debate, so I mistakenly viewed it as a possible win for common sense (i.e., those of us interested in preventing vote fraud). Aside from Judge Wynn’s over-the-top rants and raves, well documented by Susan Myrick of Civitas Institute, I naively expected a fair ruling. But after a sit-down with a few well-placed sources, things changed.

“We couldn’t have gotten a worse set of judges in the entire Fourth Circuit,” said one source.

The three-judge panel is randomly filled from among the 14 active circuit judges in this district; but (as is the court’s custom) their names were withheld until the day of the oral arguments.

“But wait,” I objected, “Judge Motz asked some hard questions to both sides.”

One well-placed attorney refuted my glimmer of hope by explaining her reputation for belittling all attorneys who argue in her court. She may be polite and affable but no fun to face in court, sorta like the dreaded Professor Kingsfield in the 1973 movie, The Paper Chase.

“We’re losing big at this level,” said one source, who expects to see a quick ruling this coming week.

That’s when the fraud deniers will spike the football. Headlines and editorials all across the nation will slam North Carolina and beat up US Senate candidate (and former House Speaker) Thom Tillis for daring to allow such an “egregious” law to be enacted. But, this too shall pass.

Sticking with the football analogy, it’s a long game. Their side is losing badly and they know it; so don’t let a second-quarter touchdown scare you.

Will Biased Judges Exercise PEST Control?

After these three Democratic judges ruin their reputation by ruling for the plaintiffs, the decision will cause a chaotic reversal of four fraud-prevention measures in the omnibus election law reform bill known as House Bill 589 (HB 589). We’ll call them the PEST provisions because that’s how the fraud deniers view them and it’s also how we can remember them easily.

P is for provisional ballots. These things are chaotic and bad people have exploited this fraud-friendly provision of federal law by “overwhelming the system.” Shortly after each election, provisional ballots are all handled (and handled a lot, I might add) by a three-member election board in each county. NC had around 52,000 of them in the 2012 election. California had over a million. With hardly any rules, each board votes on the admissibility of each ballot and their biases are on full display during that process. Our Legislature enacted one–just one–standard on the 100 county boards and the bad guys are protesting in the streets about it. The standard is to only accept provisional ballots when they’re cast in their legitimate precinct.

E is for early voting. By reducing the number of days allowed for early voting, the Legislature made it harder for circuit-riding voters to move from one early voting location to another with a stack of fake utility bills that would enable them to cast lots of illegal votes. The more days you have for this practice, the more votes can be stolen. The Legislature reduced the days, but mandated the same number of hours; so this law allows either longer hours of voting at the same locations or it allows the same number of hours at more locations. So, one effect of this law is to create more satellite locations for early voters. This expands access for the poor, but fraud deniers ignore such inconvenient facts.

S is for same-day registration (SDR). This is the idiotic practice of allowing people to register and vote at a time is so close to the election that election officials have no way to verify the residency of the voters. In our Nov 2012 analysis, more than 2,000 SDR votes were counted, but their official voter registration cards were returned by the Post Office, marked “undeliverable.” Through no fault of election officials, Buncombe County had 64 such votes returned and also had a County Commission race that was decided by 18 votes. SDR is one of the easiest ways to commit massive election fraud, so the plaintiff wants it to remain on the books in North Carolina. Only eight states are currently stupid enough to have SDR on the books, but the plaintiff is shamelessly screaming that NC’s lawmakers are a bunch of racists for not keeping SDR in our state.

T is for teen registrations. Each year, high school civics teachers have been able to hold a grade over their students’ heads and make them register to vote as soon as they turn 16. The idea is to “encourage participation,” but the result is tens of thousands of registrations in a student’s home town that never result in votes. Even worse, when the same student goes away to college, activists register them again by groups like NC PIRG and numerous environmental activists. The law pretends that these kids’ earlier registrations will be removed when they register at FarAway University, but we know otherwise and so did the Legislature. This policy has served to fatten the voter rolls with names of people who don’t realize they’re registered to vote and this is a dangerous situation that invites either identity theft or double voting. The Legislature killed the practice and we applaud.

And the Good News Is . . . 

As noted earlier, probably sometime this week, the Appellate Court will stomp their feet and scold NC to add all of those provisions back onto the books. . . RIGHT THIS MINUTE!

But as this sort of theater goes, the state will appeal to the Supremes, who will have one judge make a quick decision either to uphold or to “temporarily stay” the order.

That’s where the story gets hopeful again: Justice John Roberts is the Supreme Court Judge assigned to the Fourth Circuit; and unless he wakes up this week with another horse’s head in his bed, Justice Roberts should reasonably agree that changing those four major aspects of the law, less than 40 days before the election would be too disruptive. Hopefully, he will stay their order until the actual trial, which will be in Winston Salem next July.

But of course, if McClatchy continues their current trajectory toward self-destruction, Justice Roberts’ decision will be buried near the back of section B, among the obituaries, which is also where the Fourth Circuit’s decision should go.

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Frontline Report

September 25, 2014

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There is nothing in the world like sitting in a room, watching as some of the most brilliant lawyers in America duke it out like some sort of UFC smack down. Even so, it was surprising to see how much energy they spent arguing back and forth over the meaning of the term, “status quo.”

Photography is still not allowed in court, but this artist, Jerry Junkins, will see his pictures on numerous news networks tonight.

Photography is not allowed in Federal court, so artist, Jerry McJunkins, will see his work in the news tonight.

At issue is whether or not it would be a good idea for the federal courts to enact a temporary injunction, around 40 days before Election Day, in order to stop several aspects of North Carolina’s election reform law until after the election.

The plaintiffs (represented by attorneys from the NAACP, League of Women Voters, Eric Holder and a few hand-picked citizens) want to derail this law immediately and return to the “status quo.” By that, they mean what we had before the governor signed House Bill 589, enacting it into law. The defendant (represented by attorneys from the Legislature, NC Attorney General and the Governor) want the status quo to mean the moment and governor signed the bill. They argue that the law was in effect during this year’s primary election, and are the new “status quo.” The Judges were enjoying the banter and even throwing in a few zingers along the way.

Semantics aside, the real issue boiled down to a term known as “irreparable harm.” The plaintiffs argued that if this election law remains in force for the November elections, then people will be irreparably harmed. And since those people would disproportionately be the poor and the minority community, they further reason, this law is discriminatory under Section 2 of the US Civil Rights Act.

Their biggest problem is that silly concept known as, “burden of proof.” Other than with a hypothetical situation about an old lady who cannot vote at the precinct next door to her and instead has to get a ride to a precinct that’s a mile or two away, the opponents of open and honest elections brought no evidence.. Judge Wynn conceded that a situation like that is perfectly normal for school assignments, but insisted it was improper for voting purposes.

According to arguments by the attorney representing the Legislature, Tom Farr, the other side never even bothered to conduct any statistical analysis that would normally be conducted in matters of this nature, suggesting they knew the hard evidence played against their sob stories. The plaintiff seemed to concede the point and just kept charging ahead with hypotheticals.

While that all  looked encouraging for those of us who want open and honest elections, the state had a burden to prove too! They claimed that it would be too disruptive to change the election law this close (approx 40 days) before the November election. From a non-attorney persepective (i.e. mine), it seemed the state did not make a very clear case of the huge burdens if the injunction were ordered.

The state’s legal team kept returning to the late changes “this close to the election.” The plaintiffs said it would be no big deal. Of course this is debatable. Kim Strach, Executive Director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, gave a thumbs up, can do testimony during the District Court hearing. In short, she said her organization will faithfully execute whatever laws the Legislature makes. The Wake County Director of Elections, Cheri Poucher, said it would be a major disruption this late in the game.

But the plaintiffs called on players from Kim’s bench to refute Poucher’s assertion. Bartlett holdover, Mark Burris, the BOE’s head  IT guy, testified at the earlier trial that it would be as easy as flipping a switch. The state’s attorney’s disagreed vehemently with that over simplification today and the final decision comes down to three Federal Judges and how froggy they feel about overturning the will of the popularly elected Legislature and Governor.

A ruling is expected very soon, but just like the US Supreme Court verdicts, it only comes out after three judges have argued it among themselves and written their decision.

Someone smarter than I once said, “democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch,” and that rule applies in this trial as well. The only unanswered question we all have after the court was adjourned, involved the numbers: How many of these three Federal Judges will turn out to be sheep and how many will be wolves?

 

Gamechanger is Here!

September 22, 2014

Glen Englram was stunned. After winding down his private sector career, almost four years ago, he and his wife, Ruth, bought their Western North Carolina retirement home and began the next phase of their lives. But they briefly thought they were back in Chicago when they learned that three unknown persons were registered to vote from their address, more than three years after the couple had signed their mortgage and moved into their new home.

Please click on image to search your own address for phantom voters.

Please click on image to search your own address for phantom voters.

Glen and Ruth learned of the three “phantom voters” at their address after the Voter Integrity Project – NC demonstrated their newest search tool, called the Phantom Voter Project. and located at, www.PhantomVotes.org.

“We developed the site to empower citizens by helping them identify long-lost voters who are still registered from addresses at which they no longer live,” said Jay DeLancy, Director of the Voter Integrity Project.. “Once a phantom voter is found, the site will even auto-generate the paperwork that the Election Board needs for their removal.”

In early July, VIP-NC reported finding 739,041 registered North Carolina voters whom the state can no longer find.

“The Phantom Voter Project not only helps people find such former occupants, years after they move away,” said DeLancy, “but it also helps current occupants detect any voters who were fictionally registered,and never removed.”

In years past, activists from a Ralph Nader group, called NC-NIRG, and from the criminal enterprise formerly known as ACORN were convicted for making false voter registrations. VIP-NC has spent thousands of research hours trying to create a detection method.

Dog_votes“This web-based tool will finally solve the problem of fictitious voters, fake children and even cats or dogs registered to vote,” said DeLancy, “but it will all depend on people using the site to check their own address along with the addresses of their family, friends and neighbors. Any hope for open and honest elections starts with accurate voter rolls.”

The new site was publicly released September 23, 2014 at midnight, but the group had been circulating a “beta” version of the site for a few weeks in order to solicit feedback.

“After we discovered the 739,041 missing—but still registered–voters in NC, we knew the voter rolls had been corrupted, and that conditions are ripe for wholesale voter identity theft,” DeLancy said. “Just like dead voters, people who moved away and have no idea they’re still registered at their old address can easily be exploited; and since our state’s voter ID law not starting until 2016, the risk this November is high.”

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Statement on Democracy NC Press Conference 9/10/2014

September 10, 2014

While we haven’t yet seen the full Democracy NC report, we stand in support of North Carolina’s current leadership for displaying courage by seriously investigating 81 cases of deceased voter ID theft, 165 people forced to vote provisionally after being told that somebody had already voted in their name and the 36,515 suspected cases of vote fraud through multi-state double voting. While some activists groups tend to ignore such fraud as “insignificant,” we argue that even one stolen vote is a crime against our entire constitutional system because it weakens public trust in our government. Laws directed at preventing such widespread vote fraud should be applauded rather than attacked.

– Jay DeLancy, Director of Voter Integrity Project – NC

 

Please click on photo to see VIP message on NewsMax TV

August 21, 2014

Former Congressman JD Hayworth hosted a debate between Jay DeLancy and Josh Orton from "Progressives United," a Soros-backed shell group.

NC native and former AZ Congressman JD Hayworth of NewsMax TV, hosted a debate between VIP’s Jay DeLancy and Josh Orton from another Soros-backed organization called “Progressives United” on Aug 20, 2014. (Sigh. . . We sure wish we knew some billionaires who throw money around like George does!) Anyway, please click the picture to watch the entire interview.

 

 

How VIP tracked down Perp #5

August 21, 2014

May 18, 2015–RALEIGH–We’re anticipating an arrest of this guy any day now. In case his friends are telling him about this site, we cannot say much about this guy, beyond this: Law Enforcement personnel are looking for him in three states for the crime of voting illegally in the November 2012 general election. We recently learned that the Tennessee Commissioner of Elections authorized a criminal referral to the DA in the county in which Perp #5 most recently lived.

We have spoken with the detective working the case in that unnamed county and he believes the perp has moved to another state. Sorry…there is more detail…but we would rather see the guy get arrested than see us aid and abet a fleeing felon.

To review… the evidence suggests Perp 5 voted in Florida, North Carolina AND Tennessee and there is evidence to suggest that he deliberately did this, meaning they can throw the book at him. We wonder how many other states….

Aug 21, 2014–RALEIGH–The walls continue to close in on Perpetrator #5. In a way, he’s #1, in that he’s our absolute favorite felon voter among all we have ever found in the entire FLANC project. Now, three states are investigating his habit of double triple voting.

Here’s an “inside the dirty business” briefing that shows both why we love this Perp so much and where we are with his journey to justice. This will also show why it’s so difficult to get a prosecution for this crime against our very Constitution.Perp#5

The voter history of #5 indicated that he double voted (between Florida and NC) in the Presidential elections of 2004, 2008 and 2012. Two side notes before I continue: First, while he voted in person in Florida before and after May 2012, this registered Unaffiliated voter found reason to drive back to NC and cast a vote in the contentious May ’12 primary. Second, after the Nov ’12 election, he took a rare move by asking the NC BoE to take him off the voter rolls, something 90-95% of voters never bother to do. We viewed this act as an attempt to cover his tracks, but too bad for him . . . evidence doesn’t lie.

Speaking of evidence, the NC BoE obtained the signature cards from Florida and matched them with the NC cards to conclude that the same person had signed all four critical documents from the 2012 election. The only proof of ID currently allowed for investigations under our state’s fraud friendly election law is that signature; and since it all hangs on that single piece of data, (other than his voter history) there is no other physical evidence of his crimes during the ’04 and ’08 elections. In other words, he will never be punished for stealing votes in 2004 and 2008.

As discussed in a prior post, state law conveniently allows those documents’ destruction just 22 months after the certification of the any federal election. For local and state races, the BoE can destroy the evidence after only 30 and 60 days, respectively. Imagine that for a moment: In this modern day of scanners and such, election offices “lack the resources” to take that minimal amount of forensic stewardship over the single most critical evidence of any vote fraud. The breath-taking suppression of evidence is further proof that election laws are rigged by the winners. . . sort of like gerrymandering, but by other means. . . but I digress.

Our original evidence on Perp 5 was so compelling that our buddy, “the Don” (Don Wright, lead attorney for the SBoE) referred the matter to the local District Attorney who forwarded it to a detective (no kidding) named  “Clint,” who actually spoke on the phone with Perp 5. While talking from his cell phone, Mr. 5 had a habit of promising to report to the office after his return from some sort of road trip; but he kept breaking those promises. (The guy appears to be a field rep for a cosmetics company, so it makes sense.) Anyway, Clint eventually got fed up with Perp 5’s litany of chin music, so he swore out a warrant!

We would have called that a “woo hoo!” moment and posted the warrant on this site, but there’s the matter of that pesky Constitution to consider. While Perp 5 needs to be publicly shamed for stealing extra votes and abusing crimes against that same Constitution, the guy gets something called the “presumption of innocence.” It’s all cool until some media use it for protecting their allies, but ignore it when dogging their enemies. We at VIP will strive to honor the concept and “protect the innocent.” The bottom line is that Clint couldn’t “serve” the warrant to Perp 5 because the rat fled the state and even taunted Clint, saying he was “never coming back to North Carolina” (Note to reader: We’ll see about that.)

Now, this is pretty much where we left that story in a previous post that highlighted the difficulty in getting arrests for vote fraud, but we never stopped our own investigation. Now, using the type of websites frequented by jilted boyfriends who are stalking their ex’es, we’ve found Perp 5 in Tennessee and hold the phone. . . last night, we learned that he had even registered to vote there!

And then it got better!

Today, after several phone conversations with Clint and with Mark Goins, Tennessee’s Coordinator of Elections, we discovered that Perp 5 had the brass to vote in Tennessee’s 2008 and 2012 November elections too!!! That’s right. There’s evidence to suggest he voted in at least three states on a regular basis!

Still wondering who the heck we (VIP) are, Mark Goins expressed a “very high” interest in bringing this Perp to justice, so we are inching ever so closer to bagging our first exception to the so-called “Progressive’s” mantra that there is no vote fraud. [Note to media: Please do not call Mark until after TN Cong District-4 race is certified. It was won by only 35 votes and Mark is very busy.]

So, while Proggies stick to their fraud-denial story and demand that we show them some prosecutions in order to disprove their fantasy theme, we say, “okay, but be careful what you ask for!”

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As a reminder, we are still an all-volunteer organization made up of people who don’t take a paycheck for this work. In fact, all of our work is funded by the generosity of supporters, so please consider making a sacrificial donation to enable our continuation.

Thanks,

Jay

More Than 700,000 NC Voters Missing

August 18, 2014


AUG 18, 2014–RALEIGH, NC—The Voter Integrity Project announced today that North Carolina’s statewide election rolls now contain 739,041 voter registrations from people the election officials can no longer find.

“These missing voters are mostly people who moved away without telling the election office,” said Jay DeLancy, Director of VIP, “but the alarming recent growth in this voter category points to a more systemic problem.”Missing Voters.JPG

There were 460,065 such voters at the beginning of 2007, but that number has exploded to 739,041 (a 62.3 percent growth) since then.  The only negative growth since then was in 2012, when VIP discovered nearly 30,000 deceased persons registered to vote.

“In an artfully deceptive ploy, federal election officials named these missing voters ‘inactive,’” DeLancy said, “implying they just sat out an election or two, but these people are genuinely missing and the public has been kept in the dark.”

North Carolina law (§ 163-82.7) requires election officials to complete two mailings to the voter at their registration address without response before a process begins that will eventually remove the missing (or “inactive”) voter.

“The law assumes that postal employees never make mistakes, so if the first letter is lost, thrown away or otherwise not returned, the person returns to ‘Active’ status,” he said, “but even if the first verification letter is returned undeliverable, election officials still can’t remove the voter.” Read the rest of this entry »