Expect Cleta Mitchell to Create Reports about Voter Fraud on the 2022 and 2024 Elections that are Questionable, but TV News Will Probably do a Poor Job Explaining That

American Eclectic

November 1, 2022

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who assisted Donald Trump when he called Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find” him votes to win Georgia in the 2020 Presidential election has been conducting workshops, I guess that is the best word for it, to monitor the 2022 Congressional and 2024 Presidential elections.  A quote she made is concerning, “We are taking the lessons we learned in 2020 and we are going forward to make sure they never happen again.”  The assumption of guilt is the way she starts—that the 2020 election was stolen—and, I must assume, the people coming to her sessions believe as she does so the way they might monitor the 2022 and 2024 elections will not necessarily be like the League of Women Voters of Maine sending out observers to 63 polling locations on November 2, 2021.  The report the League issued was positive and upbeat, I cannot expect that from any observers prepared by Ms. Mitchell. In addition, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is working with Mitchell on monitoring elections. The RNC’s National Election Integrity Director stated regarding Mitchell, “Cleta Mitchell, she’s like the best election and election law expert out there. We’re not going to tell her what to do.”

There are non-profits pushing to register minorities, younger people who can vote, as well as single women. Mitchell responded to this effort, which she sees as tied to Democratic efforts to increase their voting base, stating, “It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen.” So, are her actions about voting integrity or insuring likely Democratic voters cannot vote?

Psychology studies a term, Motivated Perception—seeing what you want to see.  Associated with this term is that it can lead to reporting what you thought you saw.  Since Ms. Mitchell is preparing poll watchers to keep notes, how many of those notes will say “Everything went smoothly.  No problems.”  More likely, whatever reports are submitted by poll watchers will find what they expected to find, and their reports will be anything but positive and upbeat.

In Arizona, a group of people went door-to-door in Yavapai County after the 2020 election, claiming to represent officials who conduct elections.  Two people were asked to show identifications that they represented the office and they refused.  In Maricopa County, again a questionable door-to-door survey was conducted which led to an even more questionable report (Election 2020 Grassroots Canvass Report) that 173,104 “lost” votes were found.  In this report they used the word “estimated” but, certainly the figure creates the impression of precision.  This report concluded:

If I were to further speculate, I would say I believe that the people who work for and run Maricopa County are good people and likely have no idea that their voting process is being manipulated for financial gain.  I believe it far more likely that small groups of bad actors (criminals) operating at local levels both here and in other parts of the country engineered ways to defraud their particular voting systems and processes.

A reporter for the AZ Mirror wrote, regarding this report:

The report issued by conservative activist and failed legislative candidate Liz Harris claimed that more than a quarter million votes from the November election were suspicious. The claims were based on information that volunteer canvassers — who joined the effort by filling out a form on the website itsmellsfunny.com — gleaned from thousands of voters, the report claimed, many of whom said they cast ballots in the election but that county election records show didn’t vote. Others said they didn’t vote, but records show them having cast ballots in the election. 

Harris’s report includes no corroborating information that could be used to verify the claims. It states that the canvass team can make sworn affidavits available that support the findings. But Harris would not provide those affidavits to the Arizona Mirror, and hung up without answering questions when contacted by phone.

The report does not provide names or addresses that could be used to verify the voters’ alleged claims, nor does it indicate that the canvass team checked their claims against county records. 

In the Grassroots Canvass Report, Matt Braynard is referred to as having conducted a phone survey of 710 registered Republican voters. Braynard is a former Trump aide who developed a strategy aimed at likely Trump voters in the 2016 election. Braynard concluded, regarding the 2020 election that in Arizona 50.1% of the registered Republicans he surveyed by phone, had voted by mail but their votes were not reported. Braynard’s findings have been criticized, particularly for lacking any statistical analysis. State Representative Bee Ngyuen (D, GA) went through Braynard’s findings regarding Georgia, and as she stated in looking at just the first ten names on a list where he claimed that voters cast “illegal ballots” in Georgia and another state, she was able to verify that Braynard made errors in eight out of the ten names listed. She was further able to verify that one of the voters that Braynard listed, as, apparently, voting in both Georgia and Arizona, is not the same person, although they share the same name and age, they have different birthdays. Representative Ngyuen further stated that Braynard made the claim that, “voters are using PO boxes to register and disguise PO boxes as their residential address to cast invalid ballots.” Representative Ngyuen recognized one of the addresses on Braynard’s list as a condo with a FedEx office on the first floor. She stated regarding the residents in this complex, “every single person who owns a condo in that building that voted in this election has been accused of disguising their residency as a po box.”

Braynard’s Georgia report on the 2020 election was updated and he claimed the following:

It is my opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that in the State, the State’s database for the November 3, 2020 election 138,029 individuals applied for and the State sent an absentee ballot but did not return that ballot. It is also my opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that in my sample of this universe, 18.39% of these absentee voters in the State did not request an absentee ballot.

Take notice of his use of “a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” twice in this paragraph. An election authority, well versed in statistics, was asked to evaluate Braynard’s report. I suspect that if the only way people are going to evaluate for themselves what is going on, is to use a liberal/conservative mindset, then they are not stepping back to grasp complex statistical issues: Everything cannot be understood or evaluated as solely existing in a liberal/conservative mindset.

Stephen Ansolabehere who wrote the report challenging Braynard’s findings made a good point early in his 49-page report:

Each of the claims is couched with the phrase “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.” This phrase is meaningless in scientific journals and disciplines. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has warned against use of such a phrase by experts in legal proceedings and concluded that “the term ‘reasonable degree of scientific [or discipline] certainty’ has no place in the judicial process.’” It has no place in the scientific research process.

In addition, Ansolabehere stated, “The report provides no information about the descriptive characteristics of the sample, or the population studied and provides no assessment of whether the data are in fact representative or accurate.” Think in terms of a public opinion poll, which might be based on 1,000 people, giving insight into voting for the country as a whole. Without clear statements in the public opinion survey regarding information about those 1,000 people and what categories of people within the country they represent (old/young, Republican/Democrat/ Independent, union/nonunion, income, education etc.) the poll would not be taken seriously. Well, despite that Braynard and his supporters want his findings taken seriously.

It is interesting to read that Trump’s attorneys told him that the voter fraud numbers that he was pushing in the case of Georgia were wrong and he refused to make changes in those numbers. John Eastman, a Trump attorney who developed the legal argument to overturn the 2020 election results, filed papers in a United States District Court in California on behalf of Trump and in that filing, voter fraud numbers being pushed by Trump were questioned by his own legal team. How should anything by Braynard be taken seriously if Trump’s own legal team was questioning his Georgia voter fraud numbers being thrown around? The relevant portion of the Eastman filing states:

On December 4, 2020, President Trump and his attorneys alleged in a Georgia state court action that Fulton County improperly counted a number of votes including 10,315 deceased people, 2,560 felons, and 2,423 unregistered voters.  President Trump and his attorneys then decided to contest the state court proceeding in federal court, and discussed incorporating by reference the voter fraud numbers alleged in the state petition. On December 30, 2020, Dr. Eastman relayed “concerns” from President Trump’s team “about including specific numbers in the paragraph dealing with felons, deceased, moved, etc.” The attorneys continued to discuss the President’s resistance to signing “when specific numbers were included.” As Dr. Eastman explained the next day:

Although the President signed a verification for [the state court filing] back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate. For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.

President Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them.  President Trump, moreover, signed a verification swearing under oath that the incorporated, inaccurate numbers “are true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct” to the best of his knowledge and belief. The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public

I do not see where it is stated what the true numbers his attorneys believe should have been used. I cannot tell if his attorneys had any serious doubts about Trump's voter fraud claims.

Liz Harris, who put together the Grassroots Canvas Report, received a great deal of attention for an earlier report she prepared on voting in Arizona, specifically in Maricopa and Pima Counties. Harris issued a 13-page report (dated March 1, 2021) with a title that sounds professional, Summary of 2020 General Election Initial Findings: Maricopa & Pima Counties Citizens’ Non-Partisan Grassroots Project. Dissecting this questionably written report takes time and TV news never has the time to do that. As a result, any superficial TV news discussion can end with a sense of credibility that something is significantly wrong with our elections—which is not the case. It takes time to actually go through something such as questionable, politically motivated reports and develop an understanding of how poorly they are put together.

Reading and then re-reading the 13 pages in the Harris report, kept leading me to look for substantiation about the claims she made but I could find none. For example, in this report there are what appear to be specifics regarding changes (of something). The following are from the report:

719,552 records added

280,587 records removed

910 registration dates changed

1,414 birth dates changed

11,166 genders changed

1,118,216 modification dates changed

416,329 permanent early voter fields changed

I have a difficult time trying to figure out what these numbers I listed above in Harris’s report mean since none of this is clearly explained. In addition, where do all these numbers come from and what should someone reading this learn and understand. I guess that somewhere among the approximately 5.5 million people living in Maricopa and Pima Counties combined, 11,166 had sex changes and contacted the voter registration office to report their sex change. Then, somewhere in the county records, the before and after sex change was recorded. At least that seems to be the best I can surmise. The words “modification dates changed” I have no way of understanding what that even means or what it implies to the broader issue of voter fraud.

Canvassing, which seems to be at the heart of how questionable reports were put together, means putting someone on the spot—asking them if they voted. Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County election official stated regarding this practice, “Voters will over-report their participation in light of social pressure to demonstrate actions that they perceive as socially desirable.” In other words, ask someone if they voted and they really did not, more than likely, they would lie and say they voted. It is a lot like surveys done when people are asked if they attend church, one study concluded that between 10-18 percent of those surveyed, well, lied—they say they do but do not actually attend church. In addition, I have to wonder about two people showing up at a front door who already believe Trump should still be President and the 2020 election was stolen, imagine their attitude and interaction with an unsuspecting resident. I doubt the League of Women Voters would approve.

One way for a reader to think about a questionable report such as the Harris report is to wonder what would happen in a court case, if this report were used to somehow question something about the 2020 election in two Arizona counties. What would a judge make of these numbers and, most likely, statistical experts would do what I am doing here, although on a more extensive level. Harris would need to go through a detailed discussion of how her report was put together.

Liz Harris seemed to shift tactics by 2022, tying people who were involved in her canvass report to tragic circumstances, creating the impression that there are attempts to silence her and those she worked with, therefore she must be on to something. Two of the people who helped her had died. It turned out one died from COVID but believing that there are whoever-is-out-there working to silence Harris, can increase her standing among election deniers. As Harris stated at a conference of people who have denied the results of the 2020 election:

So people that I’ve worked with on this project, some of them have lost their lives. And that’s sad.

So, Aaron, it may have been COVID, but the person who developed our app for the canvassing was mysteriously killed in Florida in a hit-and-run. And they never found the person that killed him. And the person that uploaded the data into the app on the first day of our official canvassing that the Senate told us to cancel—but we went and did it anyway—his plane went down that morning. Now he survived with fifth degree burns. He’s still working with us, but that was suspicious.

An ABC News report, however, could be used to throw water on someone in a hit-and-run death “mysteriously killed.” The ABC News report stated, “Statistics show 25 percent of crashes that happen in Florida, are hit-and-runs, where drivers decide running from the scene would be better than calling 911.” The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) and its division of the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) recorded a 17 percent increase in hit-and-run accidents in 2021 over 2020. In addition, those accidents with “serious bodily injury” were up 20 percent.

The people Ms. Mitchell prepared and is, I assume, still preparing, will probably submit their on-site observations as poll watchers which will lead to an official-sounding report, that may sound like the work of Liz Harris or Matthew Braynard which can be a problem.

An interesting report was released in July 2022 by a group of Republicans including former Senator John Danforth (R, MO), former Senator Gordon Smith (R, OR), Benjamin Ginsberg, an attorney known for representing the Republican Party, and Theodore Olson, who served as Solicitor General in the Reagan Administration and is best known for representing George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore. The report starts off:

We are political conservatives who have spent most of our adult lives working to support the Constitution and the conservative principles upon which it is based: limited government, liberty, equality of opportunity, freedom of religion, a strong national defense, and the rule of law.

We have become deeply troubled by efforts to overturn or discredit the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. There is no principle of our Republic more fundamental than the right of the People to elect our leaders and for their votes to be counted accurately. Efforts to thwart the People’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic.

Elsewhere the reports states:

Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.

…We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.

This part of the report I found interesting. In looking at Republican candidates for any number of offices across the country, their only message appears to be that the 2020 election was stolen. I have difficulty finding how they plan to address issues such as health care, standard of living, or economic development just to name a few.

By the time you reach this part of this essay, readers may realize that there are a lot of questionable reports running around regarding the 2020 election—and I suspect more questionable reports will be released regarding the 2022 elections and later the 2024 elections.  The problem is that any short cable TV news segment that allows someone to cite reports such as the Arizona canvass report or the stuff put out there by Braynard, won’t lead to whoever is the TV host stopping the show and saying:

Before we decided to invite this person on the show (Mitchell, Harris, Braynard, etc.) and we took the time to go through their reports and how they came to their conclusions. Let’s explain to viewers how to question what is being presented. The conclusion of the report discussed here is based on how they gathered information, so let’s start at that point and show our concerns.

Imagine a segment that addressed how a questionable report was developed, not just jumping to the conclusion and leaving it at that, that would take time. Robert MacNeil, who co-hosted The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS (1975-1995) that is now known as the PBS NewsHour, wrote:

Even the longer, more serious TV news programs…are still bedeviled by superficiality. …[TV news cannot] escape the tyranny of show business ideas of pacing. To be dull is worse than being uninformative.

So, short TV news segments will do nothing but reinforce for a TV audience not prone to taking the time to beef up on some basic statistics, that reports exist to support their beliefs that stolen elections are real and poor Donald Trump should still be President. The way short segments are presented on TV news are not about presenting enlightenment to viewers but doing harm. 

It is possible to look ahead and expect on-site reports from Ms. Mitchell-trained poll watchers.  I expect to see those questionable reports leading to an even bigger splashy media-attention-grabbing report.  That report’s existence will be thrown across the TV screen and what will follow will be nothing more than short-attention-span theater with viewers unprepared to know how to ask themselves questions that they should ask. We can expect Newsmax and One America News Network (ONN) to take anything issued by Ms. Mitchell seriously, which will lead to the viewers of shows on both stations unable to ask themselves questions. Groucho Marx (look him up if you don’t know who he is) stated, “I find television very educational.  Every time someone switches it on, I go in the other room and read a book.”

Notes

Brandon Ambrosino, “Some of you are lying about going to church,” Vox (January 23, 2015): https://www.vox.com/2014/4/12/5601522/the-difference-between-going-to-church-and-going-to-church

Stephen Ansolabehere, “Response to Matthew Braynard Expert Report,” (December 4, 2020): https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/AnsolabehereReport.pdf

Associated Press, “FACT FOCUS: Arizona canvass report draws nonsensical conclusions,” 12News (September 9, 2021): https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/elections/fact-focus-arizona-canvass-report-draws-nonsensical-conclusions/75-79325610-1aae-4831-a8f5-1629c9301add

Matthew Braynard, “Exh A, Expert Report of Matthew Braynard,” (filed 12/3/2020): https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/BraynardReport.pdf

David Corn, “A Pro-Trump Voting ‘Expert’ Was Questioned About His Data. It Did Not Go Well for Him,” Mother Jones (December 11, 2020): https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/a-pro-trump-voting-expert-was-questioned-about-his-data-it-did-not-go-well-for-him/

“CPI’s Election Integrity Network: Making It Easy to Vote and Hard to Cheat,” Election Integrity Network: https:// whoscounting.us

Senator John Danforth, et.al., Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election (July 2022): https:// lostnotstolen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Lost-Not-Stolen-The-Conservative-Case-that-Trump-Lost-and-Biden-Won-the-2020-Presidential-Election-July-2022.pdf

Jeremy Duda, “Voter ‘canvass’ features big allegations, zero evidence, outright falsehoods,” AZMirror (September 10, 2021): https://www.azmirror.com/2021/09/10/voter-canvass-features-big-allegations-zero-evidence-outright-falsehoods/

Eastman v. Thompson, United States District Court, Central District of California, Southern District: https://gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.372.0.pdf

Georgia state reps question Matt Braynard, youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXvybaYCSIM

Liz Harris, “Election 2020 Grassroots Canvass Report,” (September 7, 2021): https://streetloc.com/view-news/election-2020-grassroots-canvass-report#dpr The relevant part regarding Matt Braynard states, “…a study conducted by Matt Braynard in November 2020where he phone surveyed 710 registered republican voters in Arizona who did not have a vote recorded by the State. In his survey 351, or 50.1% of those surveyed stated that they had in fact cast a mail-in ballot.”

“Hit-and-run crashes are a growing problem in Florida and many go unsolved, according to stats,” ABC Action News (June 8, 2018): https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/driving-tampa-bay-forward/hit-and-run-crashes-are-a-growing-problem-in-florida-and-many-go-unsolved-according-to-stats

Robert MacNeil, The People Machine: The Influence of Television on American Politics (New York, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), p. 36. I used this quote in an article I wrote, “BrainDead: A Show that Had Something Unusual to Say about American Politics,” The Artifice (June 1, 2021): https://the-artifice.com/braindead/

Allison Mollenkamp, Miles Parks, Nick McMillan, “Election deniers are spreading misinformation nationwide. Here are 4 things to know,” WFAE BBC World Service (July 5, 2022): https://www.wfae.org/united-states-world/united-states-world/2022-07-05/election-deniers-are-spreading-misinformation-nationwide-here-are-4-things-to-know

James O’Rourke, “State Rep. Candidate Repeats Debunked Election Misinformation at Conspiracist Conference,” TheCopperCourier (September 8, 2022): https://coppercourier.com/story/gilbert-chandler-harris-election-2020-conspiracy-theories/

Heidi Przybyla, “RNC links up with ‘Stop the Steal’ advocates to train poll workers,” Politico (August 2, 2022): https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/02/rnc-stop-the-steal-advocates-poll-workers-00049109

Peter Stone, “Republican lawyer is key player in voter suppression drive across US,” The Guardian (April 25, 2021): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/25/cleta-mitchell-lawyer-us-voter-suppression

Summary of 2020 General Election Initial Findings: Maricopa & Pima Counties Citizens’ Non-Partisan Project: https://crimeofthecentury2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Version17.pdf