Larry Elder Campaign Prepares To Release Rancid Kraken On California

Whatever, dude.

Before the first ballot has even been counted, a website funded by supporters of Republican candidate Larry Elder is already claiming to have proved Gov. Gavin Newsom's victory was illegitimate through statistical analysis of the vote. Because these filthy sumbitches aren't subtle.

As first reported by the Sacramento Bee , a group calling itself StopCAFraud.com was live on Sunday with claims about votes which hadn't been cast yet, much less tabulated.

"Statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor," it warns. "The primary analytical tool used was Benford's Law and can be readily reproduced."

Yes, well, about that.

In a nutshell, Benford's Law says that sets of naturally occurring numbers will have more low numbers in the first digit than high ones. So you can spot non-randomness, i.e. cheating, if there are a lot of numbers that begin with 7, 8, and 9 in your set. And that might be an appropriate way to analyze election data if it were composed of sets of naturally occurring numbers, instead of precincts deliberately constructed to be roughly equal in size.

Here's a highly accessible blog post from the American Mathematical Association on why it makes no sense to apply Benford's Law to elections, linking to a Radiolab podcast if you want to nerd all the way out.

StopCAFraud.com also retreads another bogus statistical claim from the 2020 election, alleging that "Voters who cast improperly formed ballots have an advantage over voters who cast their ballots in person." As with the rest of the assertions of fact on the site, no proof is cited, although this appears to be a reference to a bunch of wingnutosphere bullshit about adaptations to make ballots accessible for the visually impaired. Remember when Sidney Powell and her Krakheads claimed that it was mathematically UNPOSSIBLE for Biden to outperform Trump in the absentee ballots, even though that exact breakdown was widely predicted based on several months of Trump screaming at Republicans not to vote by mail? Plus ça change ... 

As in 2020, this website seems to be run by a person with fewer than the standard issue set of marbles.

For these reasons, among others, I, as one of your constituents and voters, request that you immediately order a special session of the California legislature to be held in a timely manner to address the matter of electors, California electoral policies, and electoral investigations. Failure to address my concerns will result in the loss of my support for you in the 2022 election. Upholding the American Justice System is one of your most sacred duties – we have placed our trust in you.

Exactly who is being implored to convene a special session is unclear. But the threat of violence is not.

They say that in America, there are four boxes of liberty. The soapbox, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box. When we vote we exercise our rights as Californians and as Americans to make our voices heard via the ballot box, having listened to others make theirs heard through the soapbox. We trust in our elected officials to safeguard that ballot box, such that its results will truly reflect our will as Californian's. However, when those officials, either through laziness or incompetence, allow thieves to steal amidst the dead of night and cheat our ballot box, we can no longer rely on its contents. Will we now have to fight the California jury box, in the hope that the final box — the one most akin to Pandora's – remains closed?

Again, they're not subtle.

And, in keeping with the 2020 theme, legitimate candidates, who should know better than to lend credence and money to crazy people, are doing just that. NBC reports that it was only after it flagged the site that a disclaimer was added acknowledging that Elder for Governor 2021 provided "major funding" for the enterprise.

Unless polling is wildly off, Newsom seems likely to cruise to an easy victory. And then it will be time for Kraken 2, Pathetic Boogaloo, with dozens of LOLsuits seeking to toss out hundreds of thousands of legitimately cast ballots because the state's duly enacted election laws are NO FAIR because they don't allow Republicans to win statewide office when Democrats outnumber them almost 2 to 1.

Blahblahblah etc.

[ Sac Bee / NBC ]

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