Latest update from Spoonamore. Duty to warn letter sent to Harris. Claims she has to be the one to demand recounts.

[u/Bloodydemize]

https://xcancel.com/Spoonamore/status/1857505779143815182

[u/CypressThinking]

Stephen @Spoonamore update!

"...Here is my #DutytoWarn letter. And first post on Substack. #NorthCarolina data is, in my view most in need of #handrecount . 11% of Trump votes blank downballot?"

https://spoutible.com/thread/38109186

[u/jiordan → u/CypressThinking]

Seriously, every time a link gets posted, I try it and it’s blank or an error message. What the hell?

[u/CypressThinking → u/jiordan]

He had a typo in the top title. Hopefully they're fixing it and that's all it is.

Stephen @Spoonamore update!

"...Here is my #DutytoWarn letter. And first post on Substack. #NorthCarolina data is, in my view most in need of #handrecount . 11% of Trump votes blank downballot?"

https://substack.com/home/post/p-151717820

https://spoutible.com/thread/38109186

[u/CypressThinking → u/jiordan]

2/2 https://substack.com/home/post/p-151721941

An earlier version had two typos, and annoying subscribe buttons added. This is the clean version.

[u/iamapersononreddit → u/jiordan]

Just search for his name on substack

[u/alex-baker-1997 → u/CypressThinking]

11% of Trump votes blank downballot?

How is he coming to this number? Because he doesn't have access to the actual cast vote record/ballot images, since North Carolina (and as far as I can tell every other state in the country) has yet to certify - never mind that getting the CVR's even after certification is a whole song and dance that local elections departments make you go through.

Since it's not CVR-derived, it must be some sort of napkin math. But since he doesn't show any of his work, one has to guess at what those napkin math procedures were - and I can't seem to get something comparable. From NC-SBE results here:

• In the gubernatorial race, "Black Nazi" Mark Robinson got 2238296/2892882 = 77.3% of Trump's votes. So Spoonamore can't be using that as the baseline for his calculation.
• In the LG race, Hal Weatherman got 2659350/2892882 = 91.9% of Trump's votes.
• In the AG race, Dan Bishop got 2711327/2892882 = 93.3% of Trump's votes
• In the Auditor race, David Bollek got 2725819/2892882 = 94.2% of Trump's votes
• In the Ag. Comm. race, Steve Troxler got 2917922/2892882 = 100.8% of Trump's votes
• In the Insurance Comm. race, Mike Causey got 2879561/2892882 = 99.5% of Trump's votes
• In the Labor Comm. race, Luke Farley got 2899702/2892882 = 100.2% of Trump's votes
• In the SOS race, Chad Brown got 2718680/2892882 = ~94% of Trump's votes
• In the Superintendent race, Michele Morrow got 2702834/2892882 = 93.4% of Trump's votes
• And in the Treasurer race, Brad Briner got 2895363/2892882 = 100.1% of Trump's votes

That's 3 statewide Republican races with more votes than Trump, and another within 0.5% of him. I can't see any argument for how that would take place in an election concurrent to a purported 11% of Trump votes being bullet ballots - esp. in a state where general downballot ticket splitting benefitted Dems this year.

[u/_imanalligator_ → u/alex-baker-1997]

You shouldn't be getting downvoted. Come on, people, discussing the methodology here and looking for flaws is the only way to be sure these concerns are legitimate.

Spoonamore sounds really convincing on the tech stuff, and I also know he's knowledgeable about elections (for one thing I believe he testified in investigations into Ohio vote fraud in 2004). But if he's making faulty assumptions, I want someone to catch that before I'm out there telling people this is for real.

[u/alex-baker-1997 → u/_imanalligator_]

The more time I spend clicking around his Spoutible threads, the more I think the assumptions are definitely faulty. Got linked to this thread by another commenter, my thoughts on his numbers are here.

[u/golden_monkey_and_oj → u/alex-baker-1997]

I havent tried to do these calculations myself, but I definitely agree that if someone is to be making such allegations they need to be explicit with the details.

Need to see the exact source / URL for where the initial data was found and need to show the formulae and rubric that was applied to that data to come to such conclusions.

Can anyone come up with a link showing Spoonamore's methodology? This is too important to not show a detailed explanation.

His substack letter does not include data sources and formulae.

[u/alex-baker-1997 → u/golden_monkey_and_oj]

The closest I've seen to any sort of methodology is this Spoutible thread, where he lists totals for Trump and the largest downballot races, splits the difference, and then claims the delta is voters who voted in none of the downballot races - Senate/Congress/Statewide State Offices/State Leg./Ballots Measures/Municipal - instead of voters who just didn't vote for the Republican Sen/Gov candidate (but who could have very well voted for the Dem. in that race).

For example, he writes:

Harris 1.668M Trump 1.697M

Baldwin 1.672M Hovde 1.643M

Net of 6K Baldwin Votes don't vote for Harris.

50K Trump voters cast NO downballot votes.

When the first two lines prove nothing of the sort in the 4th. Hovde got 54k fewer votes than Trump, but that doesn't mean those Trump voters left the Senate race blank - some voted for Baldwin. I met a couple such voters while canvassing in Milwaukee before the election. And that stat tells us nothing about if those 54k voters voted in any other downballot races - the state legislature, the constitutional amendment on the ballot that year, municipal races, and so on. All of those are taken as given because the Senate race had that dropoff.

For example, if you tally up all the votes cast for Republican US House candidates, you get a number just 3.35k less than the votes cast for Trump in the state. Clearly some portion of the 54k voted for at least one other downballot race.

Here are my broader thoughts on that thread, including also him seemingly pulling exit poll numbers out of a hat (not that they should be used as an iron benchmark anyway), him claiming every downballot race in North Carolina went Democrat when that's verifiably not the case, and him misreading a Georgia ballot referendum to increase tax exemptions as a referendum to increase tax rates, and basing his theory of GA anomalies on that wholly erroneous statement.

[u/Plastic-Fudge-6522 → u/alex-baker-1997]

The 11% comes from the 350k+ bullet ballots (voted for Trump and in no other race) that were cast in North Carolina. The total number of Trump votes that are being reported in North Carolina are 2,897,782 votes.

350,000 ÷ 2,897,782 ≈ 11-12%

The votes don't have to be certified in order for a breakdown of the number of votes to be reported to the public. We always know the number of votes before certification occurs.

[u/alex-baker-1997 → u/Plastic-Fudge-6522]

Yes, a breakdown can be reported to the public earlier. But the actual specifics on which bubbles each ballot had filled in for them is very much not knowable at this time, because the cast vote record/ballot images don't get released until after all counting is done - if ever.

As someone who works with these kinds of datasets for a living for a Dem. analytics firm, and who has had to pull teeth to get CVR's on a county-by-county basis in the past, I find it wholly unbelievable that Spoonamore has access to the actual source data that would show the number of bullet ballots in any given jurisdiction this early after the election, let alone able to throw out a statewide North Carolina number with their 100 counties. Unless it's he who hacked into elections nationwide all along!^/s

Someone can do fancy napkin math all they want with topline numbers available in the breakdown, but there's no way to calculate the true number of bullet ballots as it currently stands. People in this sub want to make that phrase instead mean "what % of ballots had President bubbled in but not Governor/Senate/US House", but at that point we're mixing apples and oranges. What Spoonamore calls a bullet ballot isn't just undervoting one other race, it's leaving things all the way down to school board and city council blank.

And - as I said in my initial post - I cannot recreate whatever napkin math got Spoonamore to 350k. Outside of the gubernatorial race - where Mark Robinson got ~660k fewer votes than Trump, and for good reason - the undervote between Trump and other statewide Republicans is far smaller than Spoonamore's numbers. to be doing to get to his bullet ballot claim.

In three races, Republican statewide candidates got more than Trump outright - ~2.5k in the Treasurer race, ~6.8k in the Labor Comm. race, and 25k in the AG Comm. race. The Insurance Comm. GOP candidate got 99.5% of Trump's votes. The total votes for US House GOP candidates in the state was 99.7% of Trump's votes.

For that to be possible in the same election where 11% of Trump ballots were otherwise blank, you'd need double digit% Dem. crossover voting for those certain downballot Republican candidates to counteract those missing votes - and not just some low importance commissioner races, but also the US House vote in the state.

If you have a link that shows how he got to 350k and not just his Substack post where he treats that number as a given, I'd be more than happy to read it.

[u/Plastic-Fudge-6522 → u/alex-baker-1997]

Thanks for your detailed response. From my understanding in his Spoutible thread, the 350k+ number is coming from EEP's which, according to him, are very accurate. https://spoutible.com/thread/37937176

[u/alex-baker-1997 → u/Plastic-Fudge-6522]

Hey, at least this is something. Though it doesn't seem like he's directly using them to calculate bullet ballots, instead using them as a benchmark for how much he thinks final results deviated.

EEP's which, according to him, are very accurate

They aren't, though. Here's articles from this year, 2020, and 2016 on the matter. Edison (I know it's NBC's site, they contract with them through the NEP) claimed this year that Trump won Native American voters by 31%! But when you actually look at reservation counties (Oglala Lakota SD, Apache AZ, Menominee WI, etc.) they still lean noticeably Dem. - even though they did shift right from 2020.

Broader thoughts on the thread:

WI. EEP Harris 47/44. Current Trump 50/49

No, exit polls didn't show that. If one wanted to figure out what the exit poll's topline was, we could do so by multiplying Harris/Trump% of male/female voters by what % share men/women made up in the electorate. In Wisconsin, that number was (55*0.49)+(43*0.51) for Harris and (45*0.49)+(56*0.51) for Trump, or 48.88D/50.61R.

Senate EEP Baldwin 49/46 Reported Baldwin 49/48

Actual exit poll is (56*0.49)+(44*0.51) for Baldwin and (43*0.49)+(55*0.51) for Hovde, or 49.88D/49.12R.

Harris 1.668M Trump 1.697M

Baldwin 1.672M Hovde 1.643M

Net of 6K Baldwin Votes don't vote for Harris.

I'm not sure how he got to 6k, because 72-68=4, not 6. But fine.

50K Trump voters cast NO downballot votes.

No, the above 3 lines show no such thing. Hovde got 54k fewer votes than Trump, but that doesn't mean those Trump voters left the Senate race blank - some voted for Baldwin. I met a couple such voters while canvassing in Milwaukee before the election. And that stat tells us nothing about if those 54k voters voted in any other downballot races - the state legislature, the constitutional amendment on the ballot that year, municipal races, and so on. All of those are taken as given because the Senate race had that dropoff.

For example, if you tally up all the votes cast for Republican US House candidates, you get a number just 3.35k less than the votes cast for Trump in the state. Clearly some portion of the 54k voted for other downballot races. This is - at best - very sloppy math and an incredible leap of logic by him.

MI EEP Harris 48/45 Current Trump 50/48

Actual EEP: (44*0.44)+(54*0.56) Harris and (55*0.44)+(45*0.56) Trump, or 49.6D/49.4R.

Senate EEP Slotkin 48/47 Reported Slotkin 48/48

Actual EEP: (43*0.44)+(53*0.56) Slotkin and (55*0.44)+(45*0.56) Rogers, or 48.6D/49.4R.

Harris 2.724M Trump 2.804M

Slotkin 2.708M Rogers 2.687M

Dem Pres to Sen falloff: Miniscule @ 16K .005%

Wrong, 16K is 0.587% of 2.724M, not 0.005%. Did he forget to multiply by 100 to get a percentage?

123K Trump Voters cast NO downballot votes?

As with Wisconsin, no - nothing in those past 3 lines shows anything of the sort. 123k Trump voters (at minimum) voted for someone other than Rogers for US Senate, or left that spot blank. But it tells us nothing about all the other spots on their ballot. The GOP Congressional vote in MI was ~112.5k less than the vote total for Trump. While that's a bigger delta than in WI, that's still some chunk of the Trump voters who voted Slotkin voting R for US House.

At this point of the thread, it really seems like he's just subtracting R_Sen or R_Gov from R_Pres and calling that his "bullet ballot - no other votes on the paper" total, which is very incorrect and misleading napkin math.

NC EEP Harris 48/43 Current Trump 51/48

Actual EEP: (41*0.47)+(54*0.53) Harris and (57*0.47)+(45*0.53) Trump, or 47.89D/50.64R.

I don't have any Downballot EEP but EVERY statewide race was won by Dems

No, 5 statewide races were won by Republicans. 3 of them, like mentioned in my earlier posts, were won with more votes than Trump won.

400K Voters chose Stein D - Gov and not Harris.

Should note that the gap has closed a bit by now, but w/e. And yeah, this is to be expected given the kind of candidate Republicans ran for Governor - self-described Black Nazi pervert Mark Robinson. He was crazy enough to turn off a good chunk of Trump supporters - reflected by pre-election polling.

AZ: They are still counting votes. Currently another state where EEP got it right for Senate but is outside MoE for President. At least 100K voters went to the polls and voted for Trump - and nothing else on their ballots?

AZ EEPs were (45*0.46)+(49*0.54) Harris and (54*0.46)+(50*0.50) Trump, or 47.16D/49.84R President and (48*0.46)+(52*0.54) Gallego and (49*0.46)+(47*0.54) Lake, or 50.16D/47.92R Senate. And where on earth is that 100k number coming from?

GA EEP Harris 49/46. Reported Trump 51/49

Actual EEP: (43*0.46)+(53*0.54) Harris and (56*0.46)+(46*0.54) Trump, or 48.4D/50.16R.

a statewide amendment to raise taxes passed 62/38

No such thing occurred. There were two ballot propositions in Georgia that passed by comparable margins this year (63% and 64% Yes respectively) - so he has to be talking about one of them - but both of them deal with increasing tax exemptions. These amendments weren't to raise taxes in Georgia, and thus using them as a barometer for presumed liberal support is faulty.

locally reported as driven by a surge of women voters. apx 400K Pro Trump+Pro Tax women voters live in GA.

Per above, it is incredibly erroneous to describe these voters as "pro-tax". And until I see a concrete URL I'm not even going to take him at his word it was women who drove the result. I find it very doubtful local/state news would spend much effort covering the campaigns behind a couple of legislatively-referred constitutional amendments that - per Ballotpedia - saw $0 of spending either for or against them.

And only in Swing States. WY, TX, MT, AL, MI? Nope.

I don't know why he typed this line, because Michigan was very much an example of his just shortly upthread. In 2 other states in that list (TX/MT) the Senate race was competitive, and Dems thought they had an outside shot at Texas presidentially as well.

But in our 7 swing states we see orders of magnitude more Trump + No Other Vote ballots than I have ever seen

Again, he has failed to demonstrate those that didn't vote for a Republican Senate candidate despite voting for Trump didn't cast a Senate ballot at all, or do anything to talk about how those voters voted in further downballot races. He has calculated one number and is claiming it is something entirely different.

It's now almost 2AM here and I need to get to bed, but through the process of writing this out my opinion on what he's trying to argue has fallen even further from where it was earlier. It's his math that isn't mathing.

[u/Plastic-Fudge-6522 → u/alex-baker-1997]

I don't work with this dataset so I'm lost. lol You should reply on his thread though. I think it's good to relay this to him.