Gondor Calls for Aid

Preparing for our coming fight for Democracy

Edit: I unpublished this (and some of my other posts) for the last day, due to some worries that it might be causing more harm than good. I am going to republish it now for those who might be looking for it in the next few days. For the record, it is Tuesday and the only news about certification is from the counties surrounding Philly.

We have seen some absolutely wild storylines play out in the news over the past week. If you are not looking, you really should be. We were not supposed to ever see MIRVs in combat. Yet, most people I know seem to not be paying much attention. For me… I can’t not look, it is just too fascinating. 

Watching people scheme is a bit of a hobby. I’ve spent the past 5 years hanging around executive leaders: watching how they act, and trying to predict what they are going to do. As Nate Silver would say, I am a Riverian and a gambler. So ok, here is my bet.

I bet that the beacon has been lit. Gondor has called for aid. 

And Harris will answer. With fanfare to match the Rohirrim.

On Monday, Pennsylvania counties need to publish their election audits.The DNC is showing us that they cannot pass. Yep, we are going back to the “Birthplace of Democracy” to test if that Democracy is still alive and kicking. 

I believe that it is time to stop wondering if Harris is listening and start thinking about “What are we going to do if she speaks?”

Let’s Review the Tape

First of all, this is not q-anon. We are the party of facts, science, and debate. If you have counter-evidence, please present it! This is a peer review. 

To that end, let’s review the tape

An (abridged) Timeline of the Pennsylvania Election.

• [Nov 18th] [Source] PA Risk limit audit (RLA) begins

• [Nov 18th/9th] [Source] PA Supreme court case: dispute over counting ballots with missing or late dates. 

  • McCormick stops the counting of ballots with clerical errors by emergency injunction. 

  • Shapiro sides with supreme court to stop the count [Source] 

  • ""Any insinuation that our laws can be ignored or do not matter is irresponsible and does damage to faith in our electoral process," said Shapiro, a Democrat. "The rule of law matters in Pennsylvania. … It is critical for counties in both parties to respect it with both their rhetoric and their actions." [Source] 

  • Also worth noting that McCormick argued the other side of things in 2022 [Source]. Must count the votes in 2022, Must not count the votes in 2024. Nice.

• [Nov 20th, 5pm] States start announcing passing audits. [Washington State Source][Georgia Source]

  • First election audits complete, articles emphasize the importance of RLA (not something well known publicly) and emphasize how the states passed.

  • Timing wise, these started showing up on ground.news and reddit right during the combined bluesky + reddit outage on the 20th. Both going down at the same time is suspicious, I'll just say that.

• [Nov 20th*] Recount starts in Casey vs McCormick [source] Casey does not concede and recount begins automatically due to margin below threshold (0.2% < 0.5%)

  • The Casey campaign argues it "will continue to fight to ensure Pennsylvanians' voices are heard and eligible voters can participate in our democracy." [source]

• [Nov 21] First recount results [Source]

  • I dont know if we can trust this article, as I cannot find any other reporting on these preliminary results. 

  • However, if you look at the vote gaps, the pre-recount numbers are 16k apart (as reported elsewhere). Then it mentions that

    • “McCormick had taken a lead over Casey in the recount of 29,000 votes across all 67 counties of the Commonwealth.” 

  • ??? Where did those 13,000 votes come from?

• [Nov 21] More Early Recount results [Fox Source] [CBS Source]

  • Highlights the 71,000 bullet ballots in 2024

  • (From CBS) There's nothing nefarious," Allegheny County Elections Manager David Voye said. "There are a certain amount of voters who only vote in presidential general elections, and there's probably the same percentage of voters who just vote for the office of president within those elections."

    • Same percentage of bullet ballots eh?? [Spoonamore Duty to Warn]

  • (from CBS) Lancaster County officials said they completed the recount on Wednesday. 

    • Really going out of the way to outline how we could have counted this all on election day if some people didn’t mess with the rules.

• [Nov 21] Casey Concedes [Source] 

  • This really stood out to me and should to you too. Why did he not concede before the recount, just to concede almost immediately after it starts? Very odd thing to do. 

  • Casey's concession speech is entirely about making sure every vote counts, including specific stories and numbers (1,000) that they helped ensure voted.

• [Nov 22] Recount called off [Source]

  • Approximately 10 counties already completed their recounts, while others, like Philadelphia, were just hours from finishing by the time the effort was called off. [Source]

  • Again talking about how fast some counties can get this done. 

• [Nov 22] Rhode Island Passes RLA [Source]

  • Keeping RLA in the news cycle, another data point that some states are having no issues passing.

• [Nov 25] Pennsylvania certification due.

A Strawman

To me, this looks like someone trying to build a narrative. It goes something like this:

The Republican party cheated in two ways:

• Legal: A coordinated campaign selectively challenged millions of Voters in Pennsylvania and across America, creating a ‘technically legal’ mass voter suppression scheme.

• Illegal: Through some method, Republicans modified election equipment in certain counties, adding extra ballots for Trump.

If true, then when this comes out we are going to have a ‘fun time’ on our hands. Both of these are narratives that require some detail and nuance. To me, I believe that is a key objective for all of the actions we’ve seen in Pennsylvania. Piece by piece, the prosecutor is laying out her case to the jury – America:

Every Vote should Count

• We believe that every vote should matter. People should not be silently excluded due to clerical errors.

• The RNC has re-introduced Jim Crow in the form of vote challenges, which overwhelmingly targeted black and latino voters.

• Many of you might not even know your vote did not count. Check!

Audits work

• Part of security is detection. It is impossible to prevent everything, sometimes it is only possible to detect. For this reason, we have statistical audits.

• These statistical audits are reliable – plenty of states pass them with no anomalies

• Anomalies are not normal

Politicians work for you, not the other way around

• This is not a subversion of the system like Jan 6th. This is the rule of law working as designed.

• You should expect both sides to adhere to the rules and laws. 

• The Republicans are not operating in good faith. 

  • They will argue one side today, then the other side tomorrow when it benefits them.

  • They manufactured confusion in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) by legally hindering the election process.

Donald Trump Colluded with a Foreign power to Rig the Election

• Because of course he did. He has cheated at everything he has done for his whole life.

• We know Russia was definitely involved [source]

• This is an attack of a foreign actor on US soil

If They Did it

The audit data has to come out Monday by law. I believe that the amount of rejected provisional ballots also needs to be part of the certification documentation (could use verification on both)

If they did it, in the way Spoonamore (and I) think, then it will be in those reports. 

So let’s go back to the starting question:  “What are we going to do if she speaks?”

We are going to have a long, grueling process of explaining this narrative to everyone, or risk this becoming a mob. We are going to need to be informed and ready. We are going to need to get off the screens and go out to our community. To be there to explain: 

• what happened

• what it means

• why it is important

• why you should trust the math

• That we are fundamentally on the same side. This is not D vs R. This is America vs Russia.

Or… Monday will come and go and I’ll look like an idiot. But I’m putting my money on this one and I am more certain after chatting with the bots (see my next post).

Also, 

“You miss 100% of the shots you dont Take - Wayne Gretzky” - Michael Scott