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I may be 72," Maria Arredondo from Michigan told us when we called her. "But I'm alive and breathing. My mind is working fine and I'm healthy."
Maria said she had voted for Joe Biden and was surprised to hear that her name had appeared on a list of supposedly dead voters in the state.
We spoke to other people in similar situations to that of Maria in Michigan and found similar stories.
To test the list, we picked 30 names at random. To this we added the oldest person on the list.
Of this list of 31 names, we managed to speak directly to 11 people (or to a family member, neighbour or care home worker) to confirm they were still alive.
For 17 others, there was no public record of their death, and we found clear evidence that they were alive after the alleged date of death on the list of 10,000. A clear pattern emerged - the wrong records had been joined together to create a false match.
Finally, we found that three people on the list were indeed dead. We examine these cases later.
When we looked for another centenarian, who according to the list had died in 1977, we found that she had still been alive when her postal ballot was returned in September. However, a neighbour told us the woman had died just a few weeks ago. We also found a matching obituary from October to confirm this.
Two other men on our list of 31 died some time ago, yet votes had been cast in their names - with the correct postcodes and years of birth - according to the voting database.
We found that for both men, there were sons with the same name currently registered at the same address as their deceased fathers.
In both cases, a ballot was sent in for the dead fathers.
Local election officials told us that one of the votes had been counted but there was no record of the son having voted.
In the other, it was the son who actually voted, but it had been recorded as the father's due to a clerical error.
US Election 2020: The 'dead voters' in Michigan who are still alive
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday December 10 2020, @07:34PM
So called "conservatives" simply do not care about Democracy. Sorry to have to say that. But it seems to fit.
If they like the result, then everything was great. If they don't like the result, then there was massive fraud. I love how in one of Trump's lawsuits, the Democrats argued that Trump had talked about election fraud well before election day. If he knew of fraud, then why did he wait to bring this case until after the election? The only reason is that he did not like the result of the election rather than the process of the election.
The fact that so many of Trump's followers, and media outlets, have continued to embrace the lie that Trump won is very revealing. And troubling.
It is perfect symmetry that Trump presidency would end with a massive, repeated and debunked lie about winning the election. It mirrors how he began his presidency of lies with a lie about winning the popular vote (easily debunked), winning the electoral vote by the biggest margin ever (trivially debunked), and the most important thing: his inauguration crowd size, which was clearly quite small.
Four years ago, half the country (more than half by popular vote) was disappointed by the election outcome. But you didn't see anything like this. Hillary conceded, as all respectable presidential candidates would do. Everyone accepted the result, even if begrudgingly. There weren't people making death threats to election officials. There weren't people trying to disenfranchise millions of voters.
The most amazing thing is that while Trump tells everyone with a convincing conman straight face that he has evidence of massive voter fraud -- he never presents any of that in court. His court cases get thrown out for lack of evidence, any evidence. And thrown out by Republican judges. Some of whom were appointed by Trump or GW Bush. Some of whom are definitely conservative, former Federalist Society members. Yet Trump's lies continue to play on so called "conservative" media, and the people who listen to that continue to believe it uncritically.
Fascists have managed to hold on to power in prior human history. It could happen again. In fact, it might be easier to happen than we think. All we need is people who value party over democracy, over the constitution, over the rule of law, and who don't take their sworn duties seriously.
The checks and balances in our system are broken. They make the assumption that most people in government take their role seriously and treat it like a sacred duty to do the right thing. No more.