Defending Democracy From Anti-Democracy Charlatans

There is a chilling story published by USA Today describing a nationwide effort by Trump sycophants to delay upcoming election results at the county level.

For the last four years, a network of right-wing activists and Trump allies, like Clements, has crisscrossed the country and held thousands of organizing meetings in order to create an army of tens of thousands of community activists to collect proof of alleged fraud for lawsuits or to pressure local election officials to not certify the election. In many places, their efforts have already begun with lawsuits and a flood of information requests.

The training for local activists − held at churches, libraries and civic organizations − largely relies on baseless claims and conspiracy theories that have been debunked in the courts, by fact checkers and independent experts, or by nonpartisan audits.

Speaking of Trump sycophants, Rod Taylor expounded in laborious detail all the reasons he believes Joe Biden stole the election, including the thoroughly debunked claim that Pennsylvania cast more ballots than it has voters. From Pennsylvania’s state website–

As Pennsylvania’s official certificate of ascertainment – which was signed by Gov. Wolf and is electronically stored within the National Archives – shows, a total of 6,915,283 votes were cast in that year’s presidential race. The certificate breaks down the votes per presidential candidate this way:

• Biden/Harris: 3,458,229
•  Trump/Pence: 3,377,674
• Jorgensen/Cohen: 79,380

Comparing these two official public data sources shows that 29,762 Pennsylvania voters (0.004% of the 6,945,045 voters who cast a ballot) did not have a vote recorded – for whatever reason – for one of the presidential candidates in that year’s race. This comparison clearly shows that there were not more votes than voters in Pennsylvania’s November 2020 general election.

Taylor has drunk so much Kool-Aid that even God couldn’t convince him Trump lost the 2020 election. He remains as defiant as convicted felon and election conspiracist Tina Peters at her sentencing. Taylor ended his little diatribe by declaring the real insurrection was on November 3, 2020, and January 6, 2021 was a peaceful, legally permitted protest that just got a little out of hand.

The USA Today story mentions recent Coos County visitor Douglas Frank.

Doug Frank, the self-described “Johnny Appleseed” of election integrity, has held hundreds of events training activists how to identify people in their communities they believe shouldn’t be on the voter rolls through door knocking.

Frank made several claims during his sales pitch at the work session on October 10, including that he hacked our county election systems. One of his sales tactics is to make fantastical yet unverifiable claims. For example, as reported by the Daily Montanan, Frank claims to have hacked all Montana election systems right in front of Attorney General Austin Knudsen. Knudsen is sympathetic to election denialism yet has refused to confirm this claim, and the Montana Elections Division insists no such breach ever occurred.

Frank’s claim to be a 1990 Nobel Prize nominee is also unverifiable, but we can say with certainty Frank did not win.

To disprove Frank’s many falsehoods, I am preparing a short video presentation that will make it easier to demonstrate the formulaic errors and tricks used in his spreadsheets. The video will also address the list of election denial myths Rod Taylor claims to believe. You can help support this effort by making a tax deductible donation here 

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that mutltiple reporting shows Frank has called for officials to break the law, and Taylor is a January 6^th insurrectionist.