Monthly Archives: December 2020

Mistaken

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Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp and Lt Governor Geoff Duncan are refusing to convene a special session of the State’s General Assembly for the purpose of generating a legislative slate of Presidential electors in lieu of that nominally generated by the Georgia voters and an unknown number of illegitimate voters. Kemp and Duncan are grasping at straws, too, for their rational.

While we understand four members of the Georgia Senate are requesting the convening of a special session of the General Assembly, doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.

This is where Kemp and Duncan are mistaken under the supreme Law of the Land, our Constitution. Here’s Art II, Sect 1:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

The General Assembly is well within Constitutional bounds to pick its own set of Electors. Furthermore, the State being the sole selector of Electors, there then can be no conflicting slates of Electors for a sitting Vice President to choose between. The selections are who the State says it is, whether is specifies those selected by the voters or those selected by the General Assembly.

The matter of such an act being contrary to State law is purely a non sequitur. States are allowed to change their laws; none of them are written in adamantine once enacted.

The political cost of the General Assembly appointing its own lot of Electors is a separate matter.

Who’s Eligible to Vote?

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Recall the Georgia runoff elections for two Federal Senate seats and the parallel efforts by both parties to register new voters—including encouraging folks from out of State to become citizens of the State and register to vote on that 5 Jan 21 election day.

Here’s Tracy Beanz of UncoverDC.com:

In reading the GA constitution, it appears that newly registered voters should NOT be eligible to vote in the runoff election.

Here’s the Georgia Constitution.  Here’s Section II, Paragraph II of that Constitution, which deals explicitly with runoff elections (some folks really do plan ahead):

Paragraph II. Run-off election. A run-off election shall be a continuation of the general election and only persons who were entitled to vote in the general election shall be entitled to vote therein; and only those votes cast for the persons designated for the runoffs shall be counted in the tabulation and canvass of the votes cast.

Thus, any citizen of Georgia who hadn’t registered to vote in the 3 Nov 20 election, and so wasn’t entitled to vote then, doesn’t seem entitled to vote in the continuation (runoff) election, even if he registers now.

That would seem to leave all the Johnny-Come-Latelies now entering the State to register and vote on 5 Jan still ineligible to vote on 5 Jan, although they can register to their heart’s content and vote in other, separate, elections in 2021. If they hang around and don’t leave (which latter could expose them to felony charges for violating Georgia election laws).

Who Was Audited?

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Recall the hoo-raw over the Dominion Voting Systems machines in Georgia. Georgia’s Secretary of State  Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, authorized an audit of those machines and last month announced the audit’s results: “no evidence of the machines being tampered.”

Pro V&V, “a US Election Assistance Commission certified testing laboratory,” was the company Raffensperger hired to do the audit. The company, according to its Web site,

was founded in 2011 by individuals possessing a combined testing experience of over 30 years[]

and it was accredited by the US Election Assistance Commission in 2015.

The company doesn’t identify its founders, or how many of them there are, so it’s impossible to assess the value of those combined 30 years of experience. Two guys, averaging 15 years each, which would be serious experience?

Five guys, averaging 6 years each?

Software (and hardware) testing is what I did, as Test Director for a defense contractor, in another life. Six years of testing software isn’t all that, not when the tester needs to have a clear and extensive level of understanding of the nature of the software being tested. Software driving a fighter aircraft simulator is vastly different from software driving Windows Word™ software is vastly different from software driving your laptop’s firewall…is vastly different from software that drives voting systems computers. How qualified are these guys, really? Maybe thoroughly qualified, maybe not so much.

But here’s the thing, folks. Pro V&V has a several-years-long relationship with Dominion, which Raffensperger plainly knows, or should have known.

[Pro V&V] has for several years overseen testing of Dominion’s voting software, federal records indicate.

And

US Election Assistance Commission records show that Pro V&V has for multiple years served as the “testing lab” for Dominion’s Democracy Suite voting software. Records from 2020, 2019 2018 and 2017 all list Pro V&V as the tester for several successive iterations of Democracy Suite.

Who, indeed, was it being audited?

Hmm….

Blatant

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Racism and sexism, that is, and they’re rampant in the Progressive-Democratic Party. Here’s Congresswoman Karen Bass (D, CA) during a FOX 11 interview last Friday on who California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) should pick to replace Senator Kamala Harris (D) in the Senate:

I will tell you that I do believe that there should be an African American woman in the Congress[.]

On the other hand, when asked whether should select an Hispanic to replace Kamala Harris, Bass said,

I agree with that 100%. I think that is absolutely correct, and I think that that should happen[.]

Once again, for the Progressive-Democratic Party qualification for a position matters very little, if at all. The primary criterion, according to Party, is the “candidate’s” race, and the close second criterion is the individual’s sex.

Qualification is far down the list.

Wrong Resolution

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Recall that Huawei Technologies Co’s Deputy Chair and CFO Meng Wanzhou is facing US criminal wire and bank fraud charges related to her alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran, which she did on Huawei’s behalf. She’s in the middle of extradition proceedings in Canada en route to getting her here.

Now there’s a resolution in the works: DoJ officials are talking about a “deferred prosecution agreement,” in which Meng would admit her wrongdoing in those cases and then be allowed to return to the People’s Republic of China directly from Canada.

This is the wrong resolution. The case should be resolved by bringing her into the US and letting a trial court resolve the matter.