By Michael Bielawski
Dr. Douglass Frank, who has been at the forefront of a nationwide election integrity movement, is coming to Middlebury this Saturday for a 7-hour event titled “Elections: Are They Secure?”.
He has since earned the nickname, the “Johnny Appleseed of Election Integrity.” The event will take place 9-4 at Valley Bible Church in Middlebury this coming Saturday, Aug. 17.
According to the event flier, Frank – in addition to being a Nobel Prize-nominated physicist – has met with “Dozens of Secretaries of States, Attorney Generals, Legislators, and Hundreds of Local Election Officials.” He’s also testified at legal and legislative hearings, discovered algorithms used for manipulating elections, has been featured in two documentary films by filmaker/entrepreneur Mike Lendell on election fraud, and more.
Trouble with the voter rolls?
He was in Vermont in 2023 to talk about election fraud. As reported by True North Reports, he gave examples of statistical anomalies now common in U.S. elections, especially concerning voter rolls.
The report states, “For example, he emphasized that all states’ voter rolls — including Vermont’s — are growing at a faster pace than the actual population. In some cases, the rolls are now larger than the listed population.”
He talked about how they are growing despite efforts to keep them clean. The report states, “He also demonstrated that all over the nation, including in Vermont, there’s a pattern that voter rolls are substantially purged right after each election, but then before the next election almost that same number of voters is restored. Frank claimed social justice groups sue states to get the voter rolls restocked.”
The report indicated that Frank said he would be back to Vermont with new data to share.
Observed signature-verified hand counts
The TNR report also features former military fraud detector Col. Shawn Smith, who explained how electronic voting machines – despite claims to the contrary by Vermont’s Secretary of States Office – are in fact vulnerable to manipulation that can impact election outcomes.
Smith said that one essential component to honest elections is to require that ballots are handcounted, and that must be done with certain protocols including chain-of-custody controls and signature verifications.
“It’s only where we do hand counts that we get real counts of the election totals,” Smith said.
Election security discussed on VT talk radio today
Greg Thayer, candidate for Lt Governor in the Republican Primary, appeared on the Morning Drive on Friday to discuss the day’s primary elections. The discussion quickly turned to election integrity, both the host and guest had concerns.
“We have two different voting systems,” the host Kurt Wright said. “I’m not a fan of the all-mail-in ballot voting system, I’m just not. But nonetheless, that’s what the legislature has implemented.”
He further noted that because voters are automatically getting ballots in the mail for November’s election but not the primaries in August, that might create confusion and cause more people not to vote in the primaries. Thayer agreed with that sentiment.
The whole conversation which continues onto other matters can be heard here.
Americans divided on election integrity
Public polling is illustrating that Americans in general are becoming increasingly skeptical about election integrity. Rasmussen did a poll in December of 2023 in which one-in-five Americans admitted to cheating in the 2020 election with mail-in ballots.
Another poll also by Rasmussen from April 2023 revealed that the majority of Americans now believe fraud is impacting federal elections. It states that “60% of Likely U.S. voters think it is likely that cheating affected the outcomes of some races in last year’s midterm elections, including 37% who say it’s Very Likely. Thirty-five percent don’t believe it’s likely the 2022 midterms were affected by cheating, including 20% who think it’s Not At All Likely.”
The reporter is an author for the Vermont Daily Chronicle