Laura Loomer has more evidence?

Does Laura Loomer have more evidence to support an election contest in Florida’s District 11? A dust-up in Orange County, Florida, involving the Democratic Primary in a County Commissioner’s race, cries out for further investigation. While this is playing out in Florida, the Mainstream Media report a raft of resignations and retirements by senior Officers of Election in nine or more States. Why all these resignations this close to Midterms? Might we solve a lot of problems with a few simple election reforms? You decide.

Laura Loomer cites a seemingly unrelated controversy

Laura Loomer, of course, lost her primary race in Florida’s District 11 to incumbent Daniel Webster. Recall that the lead in that primary see-sawed between Loomer and Webster for an hour and nine minutes after the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. local time. In fact, a Twitter user tweeted these figures:

Laura Loomer was up or down by 200 votes all night and then boom Webster got a net 6,000 votes dump with 99% counted. Audit!

Twitter suspended that account, but not before Laura Loomer screencapped the tweet. She posted it yesterday on her Telegram account.

She also made much of Dan Conston’s boast about budgeting $50,000 for “turnout calls” on Primary Day.

About that, she said that “turnout calls” on the day of an election are not normal practice. (A 2005 Yale study concluded that “nonpartisan” turnout calls generally don’t help.) In any case, Laura Loomer charges that the Republican “establishment” used that money for “something else.” She won’t say exactly what that “something” was, but one may safely assume she will investigate any possible use.

But even this is not the strongest evidence that has developed in the days since the Primary.

Orange County has a problem

Florida House District 11 includes four counties, or parts of them: Lake, Orange, Polk, and Sumter. Sumter County is (that’s right: is) The Villages, the largest single-stop retirement community in America. Lake County is Daniel Webster’s home base, though he has family in Orange County. Laura Loomer carried Sumter County by 1600 votes, and Webster carried Lake County by 1300. (Webster also carried Polk County, but by a mere 28 votes, not enough to consider.)

But Daniel Webster carried Orange County by more than 6100 votes – and won the primary by 5800. Therefore, Orange County is the key. Laura Loomer has also indicated that she always knew that the “Big Mail Dump” happened there, at 8:09 p.m. Recall this tweet from Vdare.com, showing votes counted as a function of time (though not to scale).

Yesterday the West Orlando News carried an electrifying story. In an Orange County commissioner’s race in County District 6, second-place candidate Cynthia Harris abruptly lost ten votes. This put candidate Michael Scott ahead of her. She, Scott, and front-runner Lawanna Gelzer each finished with less than 20 percent of votes cast. But why did Cynthia Harris lose ten points, and the runoff spot? Because Bill Cowles, Supervisor of Elections for Orange County, said “someone” in his office fed ballots to a scanner-tabulator more than once. The West Orlando News reasonably asks in effect, “What does he mean someone? WHO!?”

A problem of long standing – and another election contest

In fact this isn’t the first time someone has officially questioned election integrity in Orange County, Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) announced, to much fanfare, the arrests of twenty individuals on election fraud charges. Three of these came from Orange County, Florida. Naturally the West Orlando News asks what kind of office is Bill Cowles running.

This morning we now learn from The Orlando Sentinel that Mike Scott will advance to a runoff with Lawanna Gelzer. That decision came after a thirteen-hour recount. So Cynthia Harris is out – and she is going to contest the results.

True enough, not one report has surfaced to connect the “fluctuation” in vote totals in that commissioner’s race with the counting of votes in any congressional race or races. The Orlando Sentinel quoted the General Counsel for the elections office as saying such “fluctuations” happen all the time. But the West Orlando News quoted the Supervisor of Elections admitting that “someone” in his office made a serious mistake. Not only that, but three of twenty of Gov. DeSantis’ election fraud suspects come from Orange County. For Laura Loomer to question that, would be an obvious decision. (Could that be where that $50,000 went? Stay tuned.)

Laura Loomer might not be the only one

Gov. DeSantis has made election integrity a prime issue, not only for his re-election campaign but also in official policy. Other governors have not been so diligent. But now we hear of many, many senior Officers of Election resigning their posts this year.

The Daily Cable has an article with a definite partisan slant. But this much one can glean from it: senior election officials in at least nine states are quitting. These include the entire three-member elections office staff for Gillespie County, Texas. The Fredericksburg Standard (Fredericksburg, Texas, seat of Gillespie County) quotes one of them as blaming “threats” and “stalking” for her decision to quit. KXAN-TV quotes Sam Taylor, Texas Deputy Secretary of State for Communications, as saying he’s never seen such a thing. The Daily Cable article quotes him as saying that Texas has seen a 30 percent turnover in county officials in the last two years.

But the Cable article leads with what is likely the real reason for these resignations.

Long-time county clerk Sam Merlino decided to leave her job after officials in Nye County, Nevada, accepted a pitch from a Republican nominee for secretary of state to stop using voting machines for the general election and instead switch to hand counting.

Why should that prompt an election official to quit? Could it be that she knows that “the machines” are Black Boxes? Hand counts would relieve a lot of suspicious, and need not take up too much time.

The French experience

In fact, ABC News, in April, carried a story on how France does its elections. The details are very instructive, perhaps in a way ABC never intended:

All voters vote on paper, and by law only the paper ballots count.

Any person who cannot vote in person may designate another person to vote on his or her behalf. But to do that, the voter must register himself (or herself) and his (or her) proxy in advance. What’s more, the voter must leave that form with the local police. A person may serve as a proxy for one voter living in France and maybe for an expatriate. (This eliminates the need for a Mobile Voting Precinct.)

Since 1975, mail-in ballots have been illegal in France. France has started to introduce “machines” since 2002. But since 2008 France has bought no new machines, by reason of “security concerns.” President Emmanuel Macron tried to allow early voting by machine, but the French Senate would have none of it.

People who test positive for coronavirus may still vote. Authorities in April encouraged, but did not require, masking. Officers of election allow hand washing, make hand sanitizer available, and ventilate the polling place for ten minutes every hour.

If the French can do it, so can we. And this would eliminate all the problems Laura Loomer cited and the West Orlando News reported. No mail-in ballots. No scanner-tabulators with people feeding the machines more than once. Problems solved.