Left to Right: Linda Rantz, State Lead – Cause of America Missouri, Toni Viens, Chair of Election Integrity Jackson County GOP, Senator Bill Eigel, Senator Jill Carter and Mike Lindell
POSITIVE PROGRESS: Mike Lindell Meets with Linda Rantz, State Lead – Cause of America Missouri, Missouri Senators Bill Eigel and Jill Carter to Discuss Election Integrity in Missouri
Toni Viens assisted in this article.
On Thursday, January 5, 2023, Mike Lindell, along with a group of concerned Missouri citizens, met with State Senator Bill Eigel, 2024 candidate for Missouri Governor and State Senator Jill Carter to talk about Missouri election integrity and to revitalize a Missouri 1977 statue allowing “Hand Counting of Elections” in the state.
The reasons for the initiative to return to hand counting are firmly based on Missouri Canvassers’ May 2022 report findings that “Missouri Elections are Impossible to Validate”.
A partial listing of findings from the Missouri Canvassers’ report includes:
1. The Canvassers identified that in Missouri there is no final list of individuals who voted in the 2020 Election or any election. The state allows six months for the counties to provide their final lists of those who voted in an election but this list can be adjusted by electors added to and deleted from the county voter rolls.
2. Missouri’s voter rolls are inflated with its registration rate of 91% being 21% over the national average. This is due to a large number of ghost registrations in the state – individuals registered at a particular address who doesn’t live there.
3. The group canvassed 4,917 residences and a quarter (25%) of those who answered had voting irregularities. (692 out of 2,799). These irregularities are related to phantom, stolen and lost votes.
In May 2022, these canvassers attempted to share these results with politicians at the state capital in Jefferson City but in some instances were ignored or asked to leave. TGP reported on this at the time.
In addition, it’s been uncovered that much of Missouri’s election equipment is developed by three main companies, Dominion, Unison, and ES&S. These companies maintain and update their own equipment, not Missouri officials. Missouri citizens, experts, and election officials are unable to “see inside the box” in order to know for certain if the software or internal machine electronics are operating correctly or if the machines can be compromised allowing for erroneous election results.
The transparency and security of these voting systems are in question because of the efforts to block any audits of these systems.
Because of the preceding irregularities, a 1977 statute allowing for hand counting is being reviewed by those interested in cleaning up Missouri’s elections.
In 1977, the Missouri legislature was working on statutes allowing for hand counting of ballots and also providing the legislature with detailed steps for the process. This process was signed into law and has been available ever since.
One of the major benefits of hand counting is this provides for more secure tabulations while providing transparency to voters, including verification of chain-of-custody. The Cause of America, Missouri has compiled a comprehensive document providing the step-by-step process for hand counting of elections.
Hand counting of elections classes are anticipated to be available to County Clerks and citizens in the very near term.
Here is a link to the Missouri chapter of Cause of America’s manual on hand recounting.
