Election deniers overthrown by Idaho secretary of state

Conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation about the 2020 election took their allegations to Idaho, and Idaho officials immediately pushed back.

Top Gem State election administrators at the office of Secretary of State Lawrence Wasden (R) said Wednesday evening that they had traveled to two counties to perform a manual recount of last year’s presidential contest after hearing the readers of a website linked to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, widely discredited for spreading easily refutable disinformation in recent months.

Wasden’s office said it received allegations, in the form of screenshots from a report posted on Lindell’s site, that the vote tally in Idaho’s 44 counties showed evidence of “manipulation electronic”.

The only problem: At least seven of Idaho’s 44 counties don’t use any electronic steps in their counting process, making claims impossible.

These counties, all small rural areas, still count the ballots by hand, without going through electronics or machines. This process is achievable because there are so few votes cast.

“We call them the Flintstone Gaps,” Deputy Chief Secretary of State Chad Houck said Thursday, referring to the cartoon Stone Age Family with a pet dinosaur. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s a defensive choice, a defensible choice.

Houck said county clerks across Idaho – a former president of the state Donald trumpDonald Trump Biden and the Border Patrol: So good to have the “adults” in charge Lawmakers are asking the Air Force to “pause all action” on the movement of Space Command. job? FOLLOWING carried by a margin of almost two to one over President BidenJoe Biden Arizona Democrats and activists envision Sinema’s main potential challenge over the Biden agenda, the Biden filibuster, and the border patrol: It’s so good to have the “adults” on the side. Orders Dental coverage for Medicare beneficiaries splits the parts PLUS in 2020 – had reported receiving threats after conspiracy theorists spread misinformation about the vote count and alleged evidence of hacking of voting machines.

“There have been counties that have received threats of prejudice at the county clerk’s office, at the election officer level,” he said.

Some of these allegations included alleged geolocations of IP addresses, latitudes and longitudes which, while implausible, would put servers on top of mountains.

But Houck said Wasden’s office was prepared to face disinformation in the hopes of offering real evidence that could prove or disprove the claims.

“Anytime you have any allegations of irregularities, whatever they are, and in this case of widespread fraud, they don’t necessarily see or know the boundaries,” Houck said. “At the first step, go ahead, it’s just unbelievable. But nonetheless, we said that if we were presented with information, we would send it back to the ground. “

Houck and a team from the Wasden office therefore decided to carry out a manual recount of two counties, Butte and Camas, which had compiled their ballots without machines.

“In fact, they contacted us. They contacted my election clerk on Tuesday, ”Butte County Clerk Shelly Blackner said in an interview. “When they arrived, Chad Houck explained very well what they were doing, how they were going to do it. He explained to us that they were videotaping, and they just started the process.

The first results reported in Butte County showed 1,202 votes for Trump and 188 for Biden. Misinformation on Lindell’s site alleged that only 130 votes were counted for Biden – but, in front of Democratic and Republican witnesses, Houck’s tally, captured on video, found the expected 188 votes for the Democratic nominee. Trump’s vote count fell to 1,193 – a difference of nine ballots equivalent to human error of 0.63%.

“I felt like we were very organized. We had everything in order for them, ”said Blackner.

In Camas County, the official tally was reduced by a single vote: Trump’s total fell from 507 ballots, as reported by the county, to 508, while the 149 ballots cast for Biden were all present. The margin of error – one ballot out of 674 cast – was 0.14%.

The debunked claims are the latest in a series of allegations Lindell or his allies have made about the 2020 election that collapsed even under the most basic scrutiny.

Earlier this month, Lindell visited Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (right) and was quick to claim that unidentified cybercriminals had overturned 100,000 votes in a state Trump carried easily. Merrill rejected Lindell’s claims, for which he offered no evidence.

In an interview, Houck lamented the disinformation that continues to circulate nearly eleven months after election day, even in states where the results have never really been in doubt.

“Somewhere along the line people have to draw a line in the sand and say it’s irrational,” he said. “That doesn’t justify the expense of wholesaling and finding what you think is a needle in what you think is a haystack.”