These Tweets Show Why Sean Hannity Is Dead Wrong About Election Fraud in Philly
Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity. | Photo by Rick Scuteri/AP
After conservative political commentator Sean Hannity offhandedly suggested on Twitter that something dubious had happened in the 2012 election in Philadelphia because not a single person in 59 voting divisions voted for Mitt Romney, a city elections inspector took it upon himself to publicly lay out all the reasons why Hannity is probably wrong.
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/762344313724502016
Hannity’s statement follows his interview with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has claimed that the upcoming election is “going to be rigged,” just as he has fallen widely behind Hillary Clinton in the polls.
It’s true that 59 of the city’s 1,687 voting divisions received not one Romney vote in 2012, while President Barack Obama received 19,605 votes. Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University in 2012, told the Inquirer that the results shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Big cities tend to hold a majority of Democratic voters, Rodden said, “and you are looking at the extreme end of it in Philadelphia.”
Still, some (like Hannity) saw the numbers and were immediately suspicious. But Ryan Godfrey of West Philly, an Independent inspector of elections, took to Twitter to break down exactly why it would be so hard to commit electoral fraud:
1. I'm an inspector of elections for a Philly voting division. Independent but was a Republican as recently as June. https://t.co/pd82mOkEKh
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
2. People like me sign off on election results in every division in Philly. We take job seriously: certifying the accurate will of people.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
3. Claim that 59 divisions in Philadelphia engaged in electoral fraud in 2012 because no votes for Romney is absurd & personally insulting.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
4. First, there's absolutely no way to erase votes from the machines we use in this city.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
5. I've had to tell this to several parents who took kids into booth w/ them & said kids pressed VOTE button too early. Sorry, no do-overs.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
6. Next, we get a paper tally at the end of the night that we match against physical count of voters who used machines (like an odometer).
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
7. We match that against the count of the individual names of voters who have signed our rolls (and whose names we also recorded in books).
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
8.It's this paper tally we certify, display publicly & send downtown (along w/ data cartridge w/ same info) to be added to overall results.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
9. So, where is the opportunity for fraud, if I and my four or five colleagues of different parties are doing our jobs and not colluding?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
10. (And if we were colluding, we would be colluding to add votes—again, votes can't be subtracted.)
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
11. Incidentally, poll workers have colluded to get machine count to match voter count, but it's rare & prosecuted. https://t.co/7fbUzLnTQO
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
12. So, # of votes corresponds with # of voters, & can't be tampered with after fact, but what about having machines change R votes to D?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
13. It's a liability of Philadelphia's touch-screen voting machines that I can't say for certain that votes can't be switched in software.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
14. It's theoretically possible the Democrats that for all intents control Philly politics have surreptitiously installed
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
15. sophisticated firmware on some? all? voting machines to change some votes from R to D or whatever.
BUT.BUT:
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
16. Why would they ever change *ALL* R votes to D votes, when anybody who voted R could easily refute the results just by saying they had?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
17. It would be idiotic to do so! And indeed in 59 divisions with no recorded votes for Romney,
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
18. The Philadelphia Inquirer couldn't find anyone who cast a vote for Romney. Anyone. https://t.co/5hmtwwP1wi
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
19. Finally, Romney got 6.6% of the vote in my racially mixed middle-class West Philly division. 43 votes out of 653.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
20. How many votes should Romney have expected in those 59 almost entirely poor and almost entirely black communities w/ <1% registered Rs?
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
21. (Running against the first black president, with very high approval ratings in the community?)
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
22. Are you thinking like 100 votes in those 59 divisions? Because stealing those 100 votes would be extremely risky and stupid.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
23. And, you know, not such a great return on your highly illegal and risky activities in a city where 700,000 votes were cast.
— Ryan Godfrey (@rgodfrey) August 7, 2016
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