During the July 2 regular meeting of the Coos County Commissioners, Rod Taylor violated protocol to insert a well-known election denier onto the agenda. Douglas Frank travels the country armed with charts and graphs speaking to citizen groups alleging widespread voter fraud and outcome manipulation. Frank’s claims have never been validated and his analyses, methodology and assumptions have all been scientifically proven to be flawed and outright false. Courts have determined that Frank has no credibility and his methods have been characterized as amateurish by actual experts. Nevertheless, Taylor introduced Frank as an election integrity expert.

Ethically, Taylor had a responsibility to disclose the controversial nature of Frank’s “research.” When a prosecutor presents a witness with a checkered past they must disclose that past to the jury, for example. While Taylor probably didn’t bother to vet Frank in advance of inviting him to Coos County I personally, as did many others, notified him of Frank’s deficiencies. Additionally, I requested that a rebuttal be given the same 15 minutes afforded to Frank. (Only John Sweet replied, and he agreed we should have equal time).

The July 16 meeting was almost three and a half hours and at no time, not even during commissioner’s comments did Taylor ever disclose the truth about Frank. It appeared to the audience he did everything possible to delay citizen comments and then limited everyone, including Coos County Clerk Julie Brecke to three minutes.

Both Brecke and former clerk Dede Murphy pointed out that Coos County already manages its own elections and maintains its own voter rolls and so Frank’s claims were pointless. Mo Aakre, a longtime volunteer poll observer and active in the democratic party pointed out how she was targeted and threatened during the 2022 election owing to then private citizen Taylor’s insistence that our local elections are corrupt.

Taylor was not happy with people’s comments. First, he denied ever disparaging our local clerk, meaning the newly elected clerk, Brecke. He didn’t acknowledge the danger he put Murphy and her staff through prior to Brecke taking office. Then he accused those of pointing out how Frank has been debunked and referencing academic studies like those performed by Justin Grimmer of Stanford University, as “math deniers.”

Despite the mountain of evidence I personally provided to the commissioners disproving Frank, and all the citizen comments, the studiously obtuse Taylor indicated he was inviting him back for a work session!

Admittedly, the meeting was getting pretty boisterous. The audience applauded many of the speakers which frustrated Taylor and he demanded silence while at the same time he began goading the audience with comments like the math deniers mentioned above.

In order to give Brecke more time to state her case, some speakers gave their time up but when Brecke asked Taylor what he hoped to accomplish by bringing Frank back, rather than answer her he closed the meeting.

Grimmer, co-author of a peer reviewed study referenced by both Brecke and myself, offered to speak directly with the commissioners so I introduced the board to him via email.

Dear Commissioners,

In light of Rod Taylor’s accusation today that those of us objecting to Douglas Frank as an election expert are “math deniers” I’ve reached out to Justin Grimmer. Grimmer has authored an extensive body of work and is co-authoring
<Expansive.pdf>
 the peer-reviewed report that both Julie Brekke and I referenced today entitled, Evaluating a New Generation of Expansive Claims About Vote Manipulation. Justin Grimmer is copied above and is happy to discuss math, voter manipulation and Douglas Frank’s analysis and methodology with you directly.
Thank you,
Mary Geddry

Dear Commissioners,

It is an honor to meet you and I’m happy to be helpful if I can.
I have extensive experience analyzing elections and I have served as an expert witness in several court cases, including as a witness for the state of Georgia in their defense of an election reform, the state of Alabama in defense of an election reform, and for the California state bar in the John Eastman proceedings.
My research group has been evaluating Doug Frank’s claims for three years.  We have demonstrated that his conclusions are based on a statistical misunderstanding.  We provide extensive explanation of the issue here:
Please let me know if I can be helpful
All the best
Justin

If Taylor is genuinely interested in learning about election integrity he should reach out to Grimmer. If his aim is just to convince more people that “Trump Won”, like all the placards decorating his vehicles, he probably will not.

The despicable incident regarding Bob Main I will post as a separate essay.

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