Oops He Did It Again
Fresh off the collapse his trade deal with the Chinese Communist Party, Glenn Youngkin went running back to the Big Lie, implying that Virginia needed to “audit the voting machines” annually because … feelings. Jim Swift had the details in The Bulwark (I presume Swift provided the emphasis).
Now, Glenn Youngkin is getting out in front by telling voters that he wants to audit every election. Speaking to the Richmond Crusade for Voters via a Zoom call, Youngkin told voters:
It’s just to make sure that folks are who they say they are when they come vote, and people seem to trust that, that seems to be uniformly supported regardless of party. I think we need to make sure that people trust these voting machines. And I just think like, I grew up in a world where you have an audit every year, in businesses you have an audit. So let’s just audit the voting machines, publish it so everybody can see it. And I think when we press forward with this, we’re going to just make everybody comfortable that we in fact have an election system that everybody can trust and we’ll stop complaining about it and we can start moving forward.
When Youngkin proposes annual audits to “make everybody feel comfortable,” the “everybody” is pretty much just his #StopTheSteal supporters who think that even Virginia’s election was stolen. Because Lord knows, Youngkin is loath to correct these people.
Indeed, Glenn seems happiest when he’s campaigning with Virginia’s leading insurrectionist-curious politician – State Senator Amanda Chase (Swift again).
Remember Amanda Chase? She was the state senator who ran against Youngkin in the primary as the self-styled “Trump in heels.” Youngkin defeated her in an election which was highly irregular, yet does not seem to have aroused the passions of the Republican voter security crowd.
But whatever. The point is that Chase has endorsed Youngkin and he has attended multiple events with her—even posed for pictures with her. Because he can brook no enemies to the right. And Chase herself is deeply committed to more election audits.
Now, you might be asking, “what’s wrong with election audits?” In truth, nothing – and in fact, Virginia’s Department of Elections already does them, including last year.
The state set a risk measurement of under .1 and the audit results fell well under that measurement. For the Presidential race the audit came in at .0000065117 and for the Senate race, the audit came in at .0000424172. The risk measurement represents the possibility a mistake could be found in the audit large enough to reverse the election result. In other words, these results confirm that the results in Virginia accurately portrayed the winners of these elections in Virginia.
Of course, Youngkin is hoping Virginians don’t notice any of this. Otherwise, they’d realize that he’s playing footsie with the Big Lie – again.
Say what you want about Terry McAuliffe – and he is far from perfect – but electing him rules out folks like Chase and Jarome Bell running our elections in the future while turning us into the Atlantic Arizona.
