Election Security Experts: Harris Must Call for Recounts
Civil litigation in Georgia revealed that operatives hired by allies of Donald Trump illegally accessed and copied critical election software following the 2020 election. This wasn't just an isolated incident but a multi-state effort that spread to places like Pennsylvania, Colorado, and beyond. The stolen software, which is responsible for recording and counting votes, was shared across states, compromising election systems in key swing states.
Despite the severity of these actions, which posed significant threats to the integrity of future elections, federal authorities—specifically the DOJ and FBI—failed to act. Even after being alerted about these breaches for years, both agencies took no meaningful steps to investigate or halt the illicit activity. This inaction mirrors their failure to prevent the events of January 6, 2021, raising serious concerns about their commitment to protecting the electoral process and our very democracy.
Election security experts, including Susan Greenhalgh from Free Speech for People, have been sounding the alarm for years, urging the government to take action. They argue that this breach, coupled with the failure of federal authorities to intervene, poses a real threat to the future of U.S. democracy. Without accountability and a thorough investigation into the stolen software, it’s impossible to ensure the integrity of upcoming elections. The lack of response from federal agencies raises questions about their willingness to protect election systems from both internal and external threats.
This breach should not be ignored. It’s time for a full investigation and immediate action to safeguard our elections. Greenhalgh joins Gaslit Nation in this urgent interview, before a live-audience of listeners, to discuss a skeptic's guide to why Vice President Kamala Harris must call for a recount in key states in the 2024 election, before it's too late.
To amplify this urgent call-to-action:
SHARE THIS SOCIAL MEDIA POST: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview w/Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned Congress, FBI, DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of the Big Lie. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts
CONTACT YOUR REPS IN CONGRESS AND ALSO AOC, BECAUSE SHE IS A FIGHTER: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview with Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned members of Congress, the FBI, and the DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of their Big Lie efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Given the confirmed facts, many documented in court cases, that they stole and distributed election data used to count our votes, our elections are vulnerable and may easily be compromised by threats foreign and domestic. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount and publicly call for investigations by the FBI and DOJ: https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts
SHARE THIS INTERVIEW ON SOCIAL MEDIA WITH JOURNALISTS YOU TRUST: Listen to @gaslitnation’s urgent interview w/Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People. They warned Congress, FBI, DOJ for years about election system breaches by MAGA as part of the Big Lie. Join their call for Harris to demand a recount https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/election-security-experts-harris-must-call-for-recounts
Show Notes:
The Georgia Voting Machine Theft Poses a Direct Threat to the 2024 Election https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/georgia-trump-vote-theft-2024-election.html
Computer Scientists: Breaches of Voting System Software Warrant Recounts to Ensure Election Verification https://freespeechforpeople.org/computer-scientists-breaches-of-voting-system-software-warrant-recounts-to-ensure-election-verification/
Merrick Garland Lets MAGA Steal the Election https://sites.libsyn.com/124622/merrick-garland-lets-maga-steal-the-election-teaser
MAGA Openly Tries to Steal Georgia https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com/brian-kemp-is-a-klansman
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Download Transcript
Andrea Chalupa:
Hey everyone. Welcome to this special episode of Gaslit Nation. I am joined by Susan Greenhalgh, the senior advisor on election security at Free Speech for People. A national nonprofit dedicated to defending our democracy. She also serves as a consulting expert to the CGG plaintiffs in Curling v. Raffensperger. And she has been following all election what Trump supporters have been doing to try to tilt the scales in this very close election. And she, along with a group of election security experts, have signed a letter calling for a recount to ensure the integrity of the vote, which seems like a very common sense thing to do for everybody's peace of mind. Susan, could you walk us through what has your group been tracking this election that concerns you and what do you think should happen now?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Sure. So thank you so much for having me and thanks everybody for tuning in. So I want to go back a little bit back to the after the 2020 election. That what happened after Trump lost in 2020, we knew he was flailing about trying all different techniques to try to overturn the election. And there were a series of efforts to access voting machines in different states and then take copies of the election software. The software that actually records and counts votes. I'm not talking just about totals of votes or names of voters on the voter rolls. The mechanisms for recording and counting votes. That software was taken from key swing states following the 2020 election through 2021 and 2022 in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado. Those are the places that we know of at least.
And this wasn't really known right away. It didn't really surface until well into 2022 through the civil litigation that Andrea mentioned that I am a consultant to. The plaintiffs uncovered the fact that the voting systems were breached in a small, rural, very Republican county in southern Georgia where their lawsuits in Georgia, it's been going on since 2017, has nothing to do with Trump's big lie or the 2020 election. But because they had evidence that suggested that this happened, they were able to pursue discovery and take depositions and get documents as well as the surveillance video camera footage from this elections' office, and found that people who had been hired by Sidney Powell and another attorney for Donald Trump had gone in to make these forensic copies of the software.
They took all the copies of the software and then put it up on a share file site and shared it with a whole cohort of other Trump election deniers across multiple state lines, including people like Doug Logan, whose name might be familiar because he was the guy that ran the partisan fake audit in Arizona that tried to win Arizona for Trump. And they also uncovered that this plot in Georgia was part of this multi-state plot, that it actually spanned into other states. That the same people hired operatives, either the same operatives or other affiliated operatives to go in and take software in these other places like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado, and then share it with each other. And then through a variety of other civil litigations, again, we still haven't gotten into any criminal litigation.
This is all civil and as well as public records requests, it was well documented that the software was shared amongst this cohort of election deniers who worked really hard to try and install Trump after the 2020 election. And they were analyzing it for weaknesses and vulnerabilities. So this became known through this civil litigation I mentioned in Georgia because I was a consultant. I was privileged to be able to see the documents as they were coming in and discovery as well as watch the deposition testimony. And when the people who were involved in this unlawful access and unauthorized access to take the voting system software were asked in the depositions, have you been contacted by the FBI? Have you been contacted by the Department of Justice or Special Counsel Smith? They were all saying, "No, we've never heard from any federal law enforcement."
And that's when Free Speech for People, my organization, decided to make a push for a federal investigation into these multi-state voting system software breaches. We've been calling on the Department of Justice to do this with computer scientists who have warned that this presents serious security vulnerabilities to the elections going forward and threats to elections going forward in the wrong hands. There's a reason you're not supposed to be able to have copies of the election software since we don't have an open source model. We have proprietary election software. So we've been writing to Department of Justice and trying to get a federal investigation into this. Unfortunately, there has been no effort by the Garland Justice Department, unsurprising, as well as the Special Counsel Smith, not surprising.
And you see what happened today, but this presents a real serious security breach. We have never seen a security breach of this order of election systems in the history of the US at all. There's no doubt it occurred because as I mentioned, it's documented on camera. It's documented in the documents that were provided through the civil litigations and people admitted to it under oath in declarations and in depositions. So it absolutely occurred in all of these places. That's not a conspiracy. It is a hundred percent documented. Nobody has refuted it and tried to say it didn't occur. We know that they have the software. That these Trump people, the allies of Trump have had the software since 2021 or even late 2022, 20 [inaudible 00:06:31] in some places. And this presents, as I mentioned, very serious security vulnerabilities.
We have a bunch of computer scientists that have signed on to our various letters that we've been writing to the Justice Department starting in 2022. The most recent one we sent to Vice President Harris urging her to pursue full hand recounts in the key contested states because of this very serious security breach and because the recount windows were closing, and some of them have actually already closed at this stage. We wrote the letter a couple of weeks ago. But she really needs to act quickly if she's going to be able to verify the totals. And as I mentioned, there's a long list of very well esteemed computer security experts that have signed on that have endorsed these letters, that have helped edit these letters to explain how the threats actually manifest but when somebody has the software.
But you don't have to listen to the computer scientists because when Doug Logan and Cyber Ninjas first tried to get the software from Arizona, Dominion Voting Systems opposed it very vigorously and said, "You cannot give our software to somebody as reckless and partisan as Cyber Ninjas. That would do 'irreparable damage to the election security interests of the nation.'" When Sidney Powell tried to get copies of election software when she was filing all her crazy crack in lawsuits in late 2020, the attorney general for Georgia said, "We can't possibly give her the software. That would be giving away the keys to the software kingdom." And the CIO of Georgia. This was before we knew they'd gotten the software. Sidney Powell tried to get the software.
The Attorney General said, "No, it's the keys to the software kingdom." And then subsequently they took it anyway through complicit election officials in different locations. So this presents a very serious security breach. We don't have any evidence specifically that votes were changed, but we know that the systems have been compromised in an unprecedented and historic way in the history of the US. And for that reason, that warrants a verification of the results by counting the paper ballots.
Andrea Chalupa:
That seems reasonable, and it would give everybody peace of mind and it would create a new norm. So let's say the Republicans lose badly, if we have another election, then they would have peace of mind if we just made this the new standard practice.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Absolutely and absolutely should be because we hear all the time, "Oh, our elections are reliable because we have paper ballots. It's the gold standard." The paper ballot is only helpful if you actually use it to verify the computer-generated totals. The totals that come out on election night are entirely computer-generated. We know the computers that counted the votes in this election had been compromised when the software was taken by people that had already tried to overturn one election. We know that the software in the hands of bad actors can enable and facilitate ways to compromise elections. So it's only logical that we should be using the paper ballot to confirm and verify the results. We're told often, "Oh, well, we do post-election audits."
Well, the truth is the post-election audits that are done in this country are woefully inadequate. So for example, in Pennsylvania, they say, "Oh, we do a statewide post-election risk-limiting audit." That risk-limiting audit is not binding, which means that even if it were to find errors in the count, it has no legal ability to do anything. All you could do is look at the wrong numbers and say, "Oh, look, these numbers are wrong." But more importantly, they only choose one contest at random. And this year they audited the state treasurer's contest, not the presidential. So we have very inadequate audits, and unless we are using the paper ballot through either full hand counts or extremely rigorous comprehensive binding audits, we're not getting any security benefit from it.
So when people tell you and maybe gaslight you and tell you, "Don't worry everything is fine because we have paper ballots." They're leaving off the other part of it. It's like if you have a seat belt in your car and you don't put it on, it doesn't help you. If we don't use the paper ballot, it doesn't provide any security benefit. It's meaningless.
Andrea Chalupa:
And just for the very exhausted brain fog folks out there who are still in election shock, what exactly that does that mean? So there's paper ballots that we vote on, they get tabulated, but the tabulation software itself is what has been compromised?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
That's right. So the software that's in the individual tabulators at the precinct level was taken as well as what's called the election management system software, which is what aggregates the totals from the individual tabulators and is also responsible for programming elections before each election. So you have to tell the machine, "Oh, here are the candidates they're running in these contests and designate that a mark here means a vote for Trump or a vote for Harris." All of that needs to be done through the election management system.
And if the election management system is compromised, all of... That software provides shows ways or having access to that software shows ways in which you could develop ways to attack it, exploit it, insert malware, et cetera. It gives you a roadmap. And that's what the CIO of Georgia said. It will give you a roadmap as to how to hack the system.
Andrea Chalupa:
And they've had this for years now.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
For years.
Andrea Chalupa:
And Homeland Security, nobody decided to step in and update the machines?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
No, and this is the appropriate podcast to be talking about it because we had this knee-jerk reaction backlash against Trump's big lie to tell the nation the elections are secure because people in positions of running elections as well as elected officials wanted to build confidence, but we want to have justified confidence in our elections. And there has been a very profound reluctance to tackle this problem because people in power didn't want to acknowledge that the voting systems had been compromised while they are trying to sell everybody on the idea that the elections are extraordinarily secure.
So while I said Free Speech for People took on this project where we had been writing to the Department of Justice multiple times, I went and met with the FBI. I also met with members of staffers for members of Congress to raise awareness and try and engage people and enroll them to help. And what we were told was, if we want to build confidence in the election, won't this diminish people's confidence if they hear about these software breaches? So we're just going to ignore the threat that they pose and the fact that people took software for voting systems unlawfully because we want to keep gassing everybody up to believe that everything is fine and there's no problem.
Andrea Chalupa:
What would you say to Kamala Harris's advisors who are scoffing at her doing anything because that just makes her look like BlueAnon, the term for blue MAGA leftist extremists and that we would just be parroting Trump's own big lie and be the Democrat version of that. So that's obviously what the Democrats would take into consideration, how this would all look if she did call for a recount. What would you hope that some wiser angel in the room would then say to Kamala Harris to convince her otherwise?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Well, I think there's a couple of things. First, I think that she owes it to the American people, to our democracy to ensure that the vote count is correct. She asked a lot of people to work for her and she owes it to our nation to ensure that our democracy is sound. And the way that we do that is by recounting the ballots. But moreover, this isn't a conspiracy. Like I said, this is not... Nobody has ever refuted this and said we didn't do it. So many of the people that got the software unlawfully have filed declarations in other lawsuits like Kari Lake when she tried to overturn her loss in the gubernatorial race. She had the technicians that got the software unlawfully write declarations saying, "I got the software from Coffee County Georgia, from Mesa County, Colorado, all the places, Fulton County, Pennsylvania, all the places where we know the software was taken without authorization."
They are telling on themselves. It was all hiding in plain sight. There is no dispute that it actually happened. So we are not alleging, we don't have the evidence for this. We're just saying we think they stole the software. They said they stole the software. It's a fact. We're not saying specifically that the counts are wrong. We're saying verify the count. You have a paper ballot. The whole point of the paper ballot is to use it to verify the count. Now go and verify the count because you know the system was compromised.
Andrea Chalupa:
If they have the software, then why didn't more Republicans win in the Senate, including Kari Lake?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
We don't know that they did anything with the software or that they did it for any particular race or not. We know that they have the software which creates a higher level of risk, which means we need a higher level of verification. I think it's kind of as simple as that. I wouldn't want to suppose that one race was rigged and another race wasn't rigged. I know that they have the software, they got it, and that it creates this level of risk that requires a higher level of verification and we're not getting it from what the states have in place.
Andrea Chalupa:
I think it's perfectly fair. And so Trump did not have the means to do this in 2020, otherwise... Right? Is that what we should understand? The means were not there to the degree he would've needed.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
They didn't have the software. They started taking the software after 2020. People might recall that there was this draft executive order that was written up, but Trump never signed it, which would have named Sidney Powell special counsel and would have allowed the DOJ and/or Department of Homeland security to seize voting machines so they could get software. And there was that very famous unhinged meeting in the White House on December 18th, 2020 with Mike Flynn and Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock and Sidney Powell, Giuliani was there and they were trying to convince Trump to sign this order to allow them to seize voting machines. And Pat Cipollone that testified to the January 6th committee that he and Eric Herschmann came running in and said, "You can't do that. That's crazy."
And what isn't reported in the January 6th committee, although we uncovered this by reading the deposition transcripts after they went public, is that according to the other attorneys, that there was another attorney there too, a guy named Derek Lyons who was a staff secretary who wasn't part of the Pat, Giuliani, Flynn cabal. And he testified to the January 6th committee that Giuliani said, "Don't worry about signing this executive order because we're going to get access to the voting machines voluntarily, and we have people that are going to let us have access to the machines. You don't need to seize them through the Department of Homeland security or Federal Marshals or anything."
We also incorporated this testimony into a letter to Department of Justice saying, "We think this shows at a minimum that Trump was made aware of the plot." There was also, according to the January 6th committee testimony and email that Sidney Powell followed up a couple of days later saying, "Remember, we promised access to voting machines in Georgia and Michigan," and referenced it, and that was sent to Mark Meadows and Trump's personal assistant.
Andrea Chalupa:
And then in the lead up to election day 2024, Trump was saying, "We soon won't need your votes. We'll fix this whole voting thing." And everyone's like, "Great."
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
That was a little creepy.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yes, and very on the nose as Trump is. Obviously Kamala Harris is young reports come out today that she's eyeing running for governor of California or running in the primary in 2028. And if this story grows bigger and bigger, just like the Russian hack did, because I remember very well November 2016, where we were saying, "Hey, this doesn't look right." And there are these hit pieces coming out and saying, "There's nothing to see here. Look at these Hillary Clinton hacks trying to claim that there was election interference by the Russians." Lo and behold, the reporting came out much later that Russia had compromised all 50 states election voting systems, and then you have the Mueller report and the bipartisan Senate intelligence report and sanctions on Russians and arrests on Russians and on and on it goes.
So we were vindicated, unfortunately, but the clock ran out. And so I just want to say this is what this reminds me of. And I do want to say that a lot of villains were labeled, especially on the Democratic side, for not doing enough to secure our democracy when they had that window of time to do it. So Kamala Harris's political future is at stake. She's somebody that if she said, "When we fight, we win." And if she's quiet, if she slinks away during this precious window of time that we have left before Trump moves back into the White House possibly to stay forever because he's been very clear on wanting to be a dictator or JD Vance stays forever. And next thing you know, we're a captured Russian back state like the country of Georgia.
So Kamala Harris has a lot on this, right? Because people aren't going to forget this. People are going to hold her to this. And if she does run in a Democratic presidential primary, you're going to ask her, "Why didn't you call a recount? Where were you? All this reporting has come out, your campaign didn't see anything." So that's not going to help her in a Democratic primary. It may not even help her in what's going to be a crowded field likely for the Democratic governor's race because people see what's happening. The reason why you and I are talking is because my listeners have demanded that I talk to you. Everyone sees what's happening. And the numbers, sure, maybe these numbers are all fair and that's it.
But the way the Trump campaign has been communicating, the fact that this software has been out there. I think it's valid just for everybody's peace of mind and the confidence of our nation, the unity of our nation, that we just do our due diligence every election and have these recounts to ensure that way bad actors are put on notice. And that will protect future elections as well.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Absolutely. All right. Hundred percent.
Andrea Chalupa:
What do you want our listeners to do? What can they do? What do they have the power to do in the limited time we have left?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Well, I think they could reach out to Harris's office as well as their members of Congress. We have tried to, like I mentioned, get members of Congress to pay attention to this, but people want to kind of put their heads in the sand and pretend that everything is okay just so they can keep building up confidence in elections but we need to have really secure elections that justify that confidence. So I would recommend reaching out to the Vice President's office and your member of Congress to raise this issue and say, "Why are you ignoring this? This is our democracy. It is the most important thing to this nation."
It is really absolutely appalling and shameful how Garland, Department of Justice has ignored this issue for two years. I mean, they ignored Trump's engagement in the January 6th insurrection for two years as well as the obstruction of justice identified in the Mueller report as well.
Andrea Chalupa:
I had Tristan Snell, a former federal prosecutor who brought down Trump University through his diligent investigation, and he's pretty much a cheerleader for federal prosecutors. And he was on my show earlier this year saying, "Merrick Garland, he waited out the clock. He lost precious time." So that's a pretty mainstream attitude now. And Merrick Garland isn't going to have a cozy retirement because anywhere he tries to give a speech, it's going to get interrupted by protesters. And Kamala Harris could face the same backlash if this becomes a bigger story in the months, years ahead, and it's already too late.
And of course, there's also the foreign press that's closely watching what happens to America if it falls to Trump dictatorship. So there's a lot writing on this. What would you like to say, closing remarks to Kamala Harris and people around her? And what would be your final closing words to her?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Well, she took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution in the United States. And I think she is not living up to her oath in ignoring these facts. There is no question about it of what happened. And she alone has the power to call for the recounts because in so many states it needs to be done by the candidate, and it is...
Andrea Chalupa:
And we're not going down the Jill Stein route again, even if Jill Stein pops up and says, "I'll take your crowdfunding money to call these recounts." We are not doing it people. It has to be Kamala Harris or bust. But go ahead.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
And so if she was serious about taking that oath, she has a very clear path that means verifying the results of this election and not ignoring the facts of the security breaches. And as I said, there's very, very well-renounced computer scientists who have been supporting this call since 2022, but we don't have to even listen to them. We can listen to the AG of Georgia, who is not by any means a liberal supporter who has said that this is the keys to the software kingdom, was handed over to Sidney Powell and a whole bunch of people that tried to overturn the 2020 election. And nobody has done anything about it. Nobody's tried to find out where the software went.
I liken it to if there was a break-in of a plutonium lab, we've had some little spotty criminal investigations in Michigan and Colorado, nothing in George. Well, the Fulton County DA took the female district attorney in Atlanta to actually bring criminal charges in Georgia, but the AG has not brought any criminal charges there. There's been a little bit of spotty charges, but nothing comprehensive, nothing to understand the scope of the plot across multiple states and nothing to understand where it went. So I say it's like if there was a plutonium lab was broken into, you wouldn't expect that you just prosecute the security guard that let them in, or the people that went in and took it.
You'd want to know where it all went and what they're planning to do with it. And we have not had that investigation, and we are much less safe because of it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you think America will have a free and fair election in the midterms in two years with Trump and his clown car of cabinet picks running the asylum?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
That's a very worrisome question. I mean, right now we know we have a compromised election system. We ran our presidential in 2024 on a compromised election system. I don't see that getting fixed before 2026, and that's why we need to be counting the paper ballots.
Andrea Chalupa:
Thank you so much, Susan Greenhalgh, who is doing incredible work for our democracy at the nonprofit Free Speech for People. I will link to their letter that they send out signed by leading election security experts to show that this is not a Democrat issue, not a Republican issue. It is a bipartisan issue for national unity and national peace of mind. All right, so let's open this up to questions from our listeners. Folks, you can drop questions in the chat. If you've already dropped a question, just copy paste it to get it in front of the queue. And so Beth, do you want to jump in first?
Beth:
Yes. I think I've unmuted myself. I had something that I wanted to add. There's such a backwards fear in the Democratic Party that's all about optics. We don't want to be... We're so afraid of being portrayed as kooks and crazy people and villains that we're not going to push back too hard. And the irony, of course, is with Trump in office, we are all going to be smeared. Anybody who is putting any resistance is going to be smeared in the worst, most aggressive, most asinine ways. Everyone's going to be a pedophile if they don't like Trump because that's where you connect with people and get them to want to perpetrate violence against your opposition.
But one of the things that I wanted to put out there, if you're going to talk to Kamala Harris's camp, I think we all need to be prepared that approaching a recount or asking for recount is going to be framed as a refusal to accept the degree of racism and sexism that exists in America, right? It's going to be framed that way and that'll be an effective way to divide the public and kind of tamp down a lot of people of color's enthusiasm for a recount because there are a lot of people of color who are just pissed and like, "We don't trust white people at all anymore. They haven't had our back." So my response to that, I think we should all have a response to that, is it's actually tested approval of racism if we don't investigate the election.
Because all of the voter suppression, all of the voter intimidation, all of the stuff that Brian Kemp was doing in Georgia, if I'm citing the right person, but all of this has really been targeted to disenfranchise people of color and to disenfranchise vulnerable minorities. And if we don't look at that, we're saying, "That's fine. That's a degree of oppression that we're just cool with. That's a normal degree of racism." So I just wanted to put that out there. I have more questions, but I'll let somebody else go. Be prepared to reframe that because it's going to get framed as a refusal to face racism.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Well, can I just respond to that?
Beth:
Of course.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
So there's a couple of things there. We work with a lot of other groups and other coalitions in the democracy space. There has been such resistance from the other groups to join us in this because they all want to jump on this train to build confidence in our democracy and build confidence in our election systems. So many of the allies that we work on a lot with a lot of other projects did not want to touch this. The one group that signed on to a letter that we sent to the DOJ and an op ed that I wrote was Black Voters Matter, because they're genuinely concerned about this. I can put a link to the op ed in the chat in a second. So we've always been very grateful for their support because they really want to get to the bottom of this too.
And I will also say that we really need to verify the election results. I'll tell an anecdotal story. In Georgia a couple of years ago, there was a city commission race into DeKalb County where the front-runner was expected to win, but she made a comment that it had been criticized as being controversial. And before the election, and then when the results came in, she lost by a huge amount and people started to make excuses and say, "Well, it was because she made this controversial comment. That's why people didn't show up for her. It was perceived as racist, and that's why." And she had gone and looked at the results in her own precinct, and she saw that she had gotten zero votes in her own precinct, and she knew that she and her husband, her name is Michelle Long Spears.
You can Google it. The New York Times covered this. There were zero votes in her precinct, and she knew she and her husband had voted for her in the precinct. So she was able to demand a recount, and they found that she won by landslide. So people will make up justifications for reasons why somebody loses without verifying the results. And luckily, she was smart enough to demand that verification and to understand what the results really were. So once again, that's why we want to verify the results.
Beth:
And just to clarify, I hope I didn't sound like I was at all booing the recount. I'm here for the recount. I just think that the disinfo machine is going to be trying to take this angle to divide the left on this. But back to you, Andrea and everybody else.
Andrea Chalupa:
Anyone else have any other questions for Susan before we let her go? Victoria jump in.
Victoria:
Hi, I don't have a question, but one, thank you for doing this. I guess my only question would be if you can easily share, please let me know where I should send any kind of request to have this investigation done into the recounts and all that. But I also just want to say that the optics thing is a real problem. And notice how MAGA and Trump, they don't care if they're seen as racist or if they upset other people. I really think a real problem in this, and because I'm a therapist who actually specializes in people-pleasing. I really think this is a serious problem with perpetrators and people-pleasers once again.
And we're so like, "Oh, other people won't like it," or, "Oh, we're going to disrupt and make people feel like they can't be confident in elections." However, they're choosing who they want to be confident in the election results. So they want the Republicans and MAGA supporters, whatever, to be confident, but not the people who really are defending democracy and Kamala, right? [inaudible 00:34:52] I can't tell you how crazy this makes me. And it just is such a deep-rooted problem. People need to stop making decisions based on their fears of, "Oh, what are people going to think? How are people going to see me? What's the perception going to be?"
And start making consistent decisions based on their values and what they think is right, and stop worrying about what other people are going to say and think and label them as. Stop it, bring it on. Let's go. I'm so tired of it. So that's just my 2 cents. I just wanted to say that. Thank you.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
I mean, you look at, Garland didn't want to prosecute Trump for the first two years because he didn't want it to look political. So they went so slowly and methodically because we didn't want anyone to think this was political. Of course he was going to say it was political no matter what they did. So why didn't he just take the facts and pursue a prosecution based on the facts, based on the Mueller referral from 2021?
Andrea Chalupa:
Very, very well said. I'm going to just sneak in one more question and then we'll let you go because I know you're traveling, Susan. Eleanor, go ahead, jump in.
Eleanor:
Hi. I have mostly a logistics question. How feasible is a hand recount and what does it entail? Because there's a lot of room, I would think, for human error, and if we counted every single ballot cast, which would include millions of ballots, that would potentially take a long time. So what does a hand recount mean? What would it entail? And also, have you looked at all at how other countries deal with this or check the veracity of their vote tabulation? How do they maybe do it differently?
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
So I'll answer the last part of the question first. So most of Europe doesn't use computerized voting machines at all. In Germany, it was actually deemed unconstitutional to use unverifiable computers to count votes. And in most of the rest of Europe, they just use paper ballots. They have a parliamentary system, which makes it easier to hand count paper ballots because you only have to count the choice for the parliamentary party. So to recount the presidential election is also similarly much easier than counting all contests on election night. So we've had the Republicans after 2020, a lot of the stop the steal people were saying, "We have to have hand recounts of everything."
And then there was this other big pushback of, "No, we can trust the computers." So what the computer scientist community has generally fallen in the middle of saying, "We can use the computers for speed and efficiency on election night, but we don't want to trust the computers empirically without a check on them. That's why we want to verify with hand recounts and post-election rigorous comprehensive binding post-election audits after the election." If we're counting just the presidential, that's only one contest. I know if you go to California, there are ballots that are six, nine pages with so many different contest.
Counting every single contest on election night by hand is indeed a very daunting task. But if you were doing a recant of only one contest, it becomes a much easier process. And so in 2020, they hand counted the ballots in Georgia for the entire state in a matter of five days.
Andrea Chalupa:
Thank you so very much, Susan. So the parting words are people need to contact their reps in Congress, definitely contact the fighters in Congress like AOC, whether you agree with her politics or not, she's at least a fighter. And that way... Do it by email. I'm going to publish the interview portion of what we just discussed, and I'll have links there for you to contact your reps. Contact Kamala Harris as vice president, and also post this on social media. So I'll create a social media post that you can copy and paste in wherever you are and just say, "Action alert, listen to this, and then do this."
We'll link to Susan's groups' op-eds and other things which include endorsement of this crisis being addressed for our own national peace of mind and unity by Black Voters Matter. So Kamala Harris needs to do the right thing for the country, for the people that she's built a career representing and for her own selfish reasons, for her political future. Because what we know so far is damning and it's only going to grow. The knowledge, the information is going to grow as we head towards a midterm election and people are wondering, "Do we even have elections anymore in this country?" So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you for all that you do.
Let's stay in touch on all this, and God bless you and everyone you're working with and stay safe out there. And we'll stay in touch and we're so grateful for your time today and all that you're doing.
Susan Greenhalgh (FreeSpeechForPeople.org):
Thank you so much for having me. And thanks to everyone for joining us. Take care.