Daily Archives: 3 March 2022

Nothing to See Here

Posted on by
Reply

No need for signature verification on mailed-in ballots. Never mind what the law requires.

A study of Maricopa County’s mail ballots in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election estimates that more than 200,000 ballots with mismatched signatures were counted without being reviewed, or “cured”—more than eight times the 25,000 signature mismatches requiring curing acknowledged by the county.

And

Of the 1,911,918 early voting mail ballots that Maricopa County received and counted in the 2020 presidential election, the county reported that 25,000, or 1.3%, had signature mismatches that required curing, but only 587 (2.3%) of those were confirmed mismatched signatures.

What the county’s nominal rules require:

Under Maricopa County election rules, a reviewer first compares a signature on an envelope with the signature on file for the voter, which takes about 4-30 seconds. If the signature does not appear to match, the ballot is cured, which takes three or more minutes and includes attempts to contact the voter to determine whether or not the signature is a match.

But taking that time would have been…inconvenient.

The existence of such a failure by the Maricopa County’s election monitors contributes heavily to the county’s motivation for fighting so strenuously against any sort of investigation of their performance.

It’s unlikely that such “laziness” was widespread enough to change an election outcome, but the existence of error and outright fraud is well established; Maricopa County’s failure to perform provides a particularly dramatic example of that. Beyond that, whether or not the failures are widespread, the errors need to be corrected, loopholes and enforcement procedures that facilitate such errors need to be corrected, those committing fraud need to spend time in jail contemplating their sins.

But the Progressive-Democratic Party; their communications arm, the press; and the Left in general want this sort of thing covered up. They want the possibilities such things create for Party.

Yet Another Reason

Posted on by
Reply

…to adjust our supply chains, especially the beginning points of them in this case.

Palladium and neon gas are seriously needed for chip production, and Russia’s invasion and attempt to conquer or destroy Ukraine is about to have a major effect on the supply of those items if nations and businesses don’t make the required adjustments.

Russia and Ukraine produce 40% to 50% of semiconductor-grade neon, according to market-research firm Techcet CA LLC. Largely derived from steel manufacturing, neon gas is used in lasers that help in the design of semiconductors.
Approximately 37% of the world’s palladium production comes from Russian mines, according to Techcet, and the metal is used in sensor chips and certain types of computing memory.

As a follow-on, palladium at least might be sourced from the People’s Republic of China, expanding that nation’s influence over the economies and national security of the US and the nations of Europe.

However expensive the shift will be, changing to other sources are critical to security. The PRC notwithstanding, South Africa is nearly as large a palladium producer as Russia. The US can produce our own neon gas either directly, or as a byproduct of steel production with further refinement for use in chip production.

It’s not only production of palladium and neon that matters, though. Currently, the PRC is the major producer of finished chip components and of finished chips themselves. That, also, needs to change, and other producers of chips and components need to be found, and producers need to be developed domestically.

In any event, there’s also little reason to go back to buying either of these from Russia, even if it is driven out of Ukraine. So long as the current men and women of the Russian government—at all levels—remain in place, that nation cannot be trusted with anything.