All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 3, 2021 - Epoch Times
21:28
76% of Ballots Counted; Cyber Ninjas Begin Final Phase of the Audit: Authentication | Facts Matter
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good evening.
Over in Arizona, the audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County is nearing its end.
Not only have they completed recounting 76% of the ballots already, but the audit liaison has just announced that they are beginning the next and final phase of the process.
Meanwhile, five days ago, Joe Biden's agenda was hit with a heavy blow as two Democrat senators came out and announced that they will not be voting to eliminate the filibuster.
Lastly, over in Nevada, five days ago, the governor there signed this bill into law, which will require that every voter in the entire state must receive mail-in ballots for every single election.
And it's not just in Nevada, actually, because Vermont signed a similar bill into law two days ago.
The governor there is mandating that every single voter in the entire state must be sent a mail-in ballot.
How will it work?
Well, let's go through that together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
By the way, I hoped you liked that new intro for the channel.
I thought it was very well done.
Now let's begin today's discussion with a very cool announcement.
We here at The Epoch Times are running the Honor Your Hero photo essay contest.
So if you have any heroes in your life that you would like to tell the world about, go on over to the page, the link will be right there in the description box below, and submit their story.
Also, you can go on over there and just read other people's stories as well.
In fact, yesterday I was reading the submissions and they were honestly so heartwarming.
While I was reading them, I felt like I returned to some kind of normal Rockwell type of America.
It was just such a good feeling.
It filled me with hope for the future of this country.
So go on over there, check out the link.
Again, it'll be in the description box below.
And submit a story if you have one, or just go on over there and read other people's submissions.
And now let's move on over to Arizona.
As we've already discussed in several previous episodes, the large-scale audit of the 2020 election over in Maricopa County has been underway for over a month and a half now.
And as a part of that audit, the Arizona State Senate, they're doing a hand recount of 2.1 million ballots, they're looking for any possible IT breaches that might have occurred, and they're also examining close to 400 tabulation machines which were used during the election.
Now, just a few days ago, Ken Bennett, who is the audit liaison, he announced that the auditors have picked up their speed and that the hand recount portion of the audit might actually finish ahead of schedule.
Just yesterday, this is what Ken Bennett told to the media.
He further added that the audit teams are beginning to shift their resources to ballot evaluation work, which he said includes anything to do with the authenticity of the ballot.
Are there folds in the 1.9 million ballots that came in and out by mail?
Are alignment marks on the front and the backs of the ballots aligning as authentic ballots should?
Is there a depression in the oval where a human handheld device would have filled in that oval, as opposed to an inkjet printer or a Xerox machine or whatever you might think?
Furthermore, he also added that the ballot evaluation work will take up most of the rest of the month.
And for your reference, by the way, the auditors have until June 30th to complete the audit.
That's when their contract with the venue expires.
Now, in terms of the actual numbers, Randy Pullen, who is a spokesperson for the audit, he told reporters yesterday that 1.6 million ballots have now been recounted.
And when you do the math, that means that in terms of the hand recount portion, the audit team is now about 76% done.
Now, in case you're wondering, what will happen at the end of this month is that after the actual audit work is complete, the auditors, who are led by the Cyber Ninjas, they are going to produce a final report and give it to the Senate.
According to the Cyber Ninjas' original scope of work document, the document they submitted before the audit began, this final report will be delivered one week after the other phases of the audit are complete.
And so, realistically, we can expect it sometime in early July.
Now, besides these developments with the audit itself, the Arizona State Senate has also had a few visitors coming in from out of state who wish to see how the audit was being conducted.
For instance, a delegation of Pennsylvania lawmakers, they recently came to Arizona in order to meet with the Arizona State Senate and also to take a tour of the audit venue to take a look at how the whole thing was being conducted.
And afterwards, they told media that they were fairly impressed with how the audit was being handled.
For instance, here's what Christopher Dush, who is one of the Pennsylvania senators who took a tour of the facilities, here's what he told reporters afterwards.
I've never seen anything like it, to be quite honest with you.
It's fantastic.
I'd like to encourage other state legislatures to get down here and take a look at it as well, especially if you've had situations like we experienced in Pennsylvania that really have our citizens in an uproar.
I'm 100% for us having one, and I think our leadership is starting to lean that way.
Those lawmakers, by the way, just for your reference, have now gone back to Pennsylvania, and they are working on potentially starting an audit of their own.
Although, at the moment, these states' Republicans are split on the idea of whether to conduct one or not.
However, it is not just Pennsylvania lawmakers who are interested.
That's because Christina Bobb, who is a reporter for One American News and who is actually right now in Arizona, she tweeted this out yesterday.
Georgia, Alaska, and Colorado to tour the Arizona election audit today.
And so although we don't have any developments on those tours, it might be the case that the audit over in Maricopa County could spark a wave of similar audits across this country.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Regardless, we'll keep you abreast of any developments over in Arizona, as well as the possibility of other audits being conducted across the country, and when we hear anything on those fronts, we'll let you know right away.
And as always, if you would like to watch the audit for yourself, you can do so over at azaudit.org, which was the website that was set up by the Arizona State Senate, which allows you to watch the audit in real time from nine different camera angles.
Again, the link to azaudit.org, as well as all the other developments happening in Arizona, as well as Pennsylvania, all those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
Now, just as an aside, there are some fairly big developments happening over in Georgia, specifically Fulton County, in regards to a poll manager who was there during the 2020 election who reported seeing nearly pristine ballots that looked like they were Xeroxed, and the possibility that a judge might release the ballots over in Fulton County to be examined forensically.
However, I don't feel comfortable talking about that story here on YouTube, not because it's not factual.
I mean, you know our program, we always stick to the facts and we properly source every statement, but the way that the YouTube algorithm works is that they crawl our speech, they pick out certain words, and then based on that, they can suppress the video, they can throttle its reach, or, honestly, I've just had videos outright taken down and removed.
Even though I know for a fact that everything in that video was factual, it was removed nonetheless.
Regardless, because of that, I will talk about what's happening over in Georgia in an exclusive episode that you can find over on Epic TV, which is our brand new no-censorship video platform that has all of the awesome Epic Times video programs like The Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillips, American Thought Leaders, China in Focus, Life and Times, and our show Facts Matter.
And like I mentioned, on there you will find exclusive episodes like this one about Georgia that you will not find here on YouTube.
The link to that will be at the top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you subscribe.
Hope you check out that exclusive episode.
And now let's talk a bit about the filibuster.
One of the things that many people have been wondering is whether the filibuster can survive the Biden administration.
That's because, for one, the current makeup of the U.S. Senate, which is essentially evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans, makes it hard for Joe Biden to push through his agenda.
And secondly, Joe Biden has made several statements over the last few months which indicate that he is open to getting rid of the filibuster.
Now, to back up a little bit, in case you don't know what the filibuster is, let's review that for a quick second.
Normally, for a bill to pass the Senate, it needs just 51 votes, which is a simple majority.
However, the filibuster is a mechanism, it's a form of stonewalling that allows senators, typically senators from the minority party, they can use it to either delay or cancel voting on a bill altogether.
So typically what has happened is that when the bill is being debated on the Senate floor, a senator would get up and perform some kind of a monologue or answer questions or even read from a book for as long as he can.
That can be for 10, 12, even 20 hours.
Now, the filibuster itself is about 200 years old, but the rules surrounding it actually changed back in the 1970s.
Back then, the filibuster was made to be easier because it went from being a talking filibuster to a silent filibuster.
That means for the last 50 years, since the 1970s, a senator has no longer needed to stand there for hours and talk.
Instead, the senator, or the minority party, just announced their intent to filibuster a bill, which then forced the majority party to scramble together to put together 60 votes in order to move forward.
And if they couldn't put together 60 votes, then they couldn't push the bill through.
And so essentially, the reason that the filibuster is so important is that while a bill can technically pass the Senate with a simple 51% majority, the always-present threat of a filibuster means that most bills, specifically controversial bills, effectively require 60 votes in order to pass.
Now, proponents of the filibuster, they say that it is an important aspect of the checks and balances within our system.
It allows the minority party to check the majority, to force some kind of a compromise, and to not allow the passions of the day, which might be in the majority, to subjugate the minority.
And generally, it's a well-accepted and popular mechanism.
In fact, this letter here, which is from 2017, it was signed by 61 senators saying that they are in favor of keeping the filibuster.
That letter, by the way, was signed by both Mitch McConnell and by Chuck Schumer.
However, things have changed a lot since 2017.
Right now, the Biden administration's agenda seems to be hitting a wall every time one of the bills that they endorse hits the Senate.
And so, there's been some talk recently of eliminating the filibuster altogether.
For instance, just a few months ago, Joe Biden came out and he said that the filibuster was...
He further added that the rule should be reverted back to a talking filibuster, saying that you had to stand there and talk and talk and talk and talk until you collapse.
Eventually the talking ends and the Senate can proceed.
I strongly support moving in that direction.
Then he actually went a step further and said that if the gridlock does not stop and he's not able to push through his agenda, well...
Here's what he said.
We're going to get a lot done.
And if we have to, if there's complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we'll have to go beyond what I'm talking about.
Now, those statements from Joe Biden are a fairly big reversal from before, when during his 36-year tenure in the Senate, he was actually a defender of the filibuster himself.
In fact, here's how Ben Sasse, who is a senator from Nebraska, he's a Republican, here's how he described Joe Biden's positions.
Senator Biden was a relentless defender of the filibuster.
But now that President Biden looks in the mirror and sees FDR, he's keeping the door open for a complete 180 to blow up the institution he spent four decades defending.
Now, regardless of Joe Biden's stance on this issue, it looks like the filibuster is not going away anytime soon.
That's because in order to actually do away with it, the Democrats would all have to vote in lockstep.
All 50 of the Democratic senators would have to vote to eliminate the filibuster.
However, just last week, two Democrat senators, Christine Sinema from Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia, they both came out and they said that they were in opposition of eliminating the filibuster.
In explaining her reasoning, here's what Senator Sinema had to say.
The filibuster is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation rather than allowing our country to ricochet widely every two to four years back and forth between policies.
To those who say that we must make a choice between the filibuster and X, I say this is a false choice.
The reality is that when you have a system that is not working effectively, the way to fix that is to fix your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change the behavior.
Likewise, Senator Manchin published an essay in the Washington Post where he, for one, explained his thinking about the filibuster from a historical perspective, and then he said this.
The filibuster is a critical tool to protecting that input and our democratic form of government.
That is why I have said it before, and I will say it again to remove any shred of doubt.
There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.
Now, after these two senators came out and declared their stances, they received a public reprimand from Joe Biden.
During a speech over in Oklahoma, a reporter asked Joe Biden about why he couldn't get a voting rights bill passed, to which he responded by saying this.
Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate with two members of the Senate who voted more with my Republican friends.
And so, with the filibuster still firmly in place, it looks like the Democrats' agenda of election overhaul and gun control bills are essentially dead on arrival at the Senate, at least as it currently stands.
And by the way, speaking of election overhaul, we already discussed in a previous episode how over in the U.S. House, they recently passed a bill called H.R.1, also known as the For the People Act, which is now on its way to the Senate in order to be voted upon.
And as we previously discussed, if this bill actually were to become law, it would essentially federalize America's elections.
And to give you an idea of what this bill actually means in practice, this bill would, for one, transfer authority over how elections are administered from individual states over to the federal government, and secondly, it will make permanent many of the voting rules that critics of the bill say can lead to voter fraud.
Now the bill, by the way, is huge.
It's 791 pages, And there are some things in it that are accepted by both sides, such as a provision saying that all voting machines that are used in American elections must be manufactured in the United States.
However, there are many, many other contentious issues in this bill, such as giving the federal government authority to administer elections, mandating automatic voter registration in all 50 states, mandating no-fault absentee ballots, as well as forcing states to accept absentee ballots for up to 10 days after Election Day, preventing election officials from as well as forcing states to accept absentee ballots for up to 10 days after Election Day, preventing election officials from removing ineligible voters from their registries, banning state voter ID laws, shielding non-citizens from prosecution if they registered to vote, allowing felons to vote, legalizing nationwide mail-in
In fact, by the way, if you'd like to see an overview of all those proposed changes, we here at the Epoch Times put together an awesome infographic that you can take a look at and see it for yourself, The link to that infographic will be down there in the description box below.
However, it looks like, in the Senate at least, this bill will not be going anywhere fast.
That's because even though Chuck Schumer will be forcing a vote on this election reform bill in the Senate, Joe Manchin, the senator we discussed earlier, he recently came out and said that he will vote against it.
Here's how he explained his reasoning in a local newspaper.
It has been said by much wiser people than me that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Well, what I've seen during my time in Washington is that every party in power will always want to exercise absolute power absolutely.
I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy.
And for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act.
And so, even aside from the filibuster, it looks like this bill will not be able to be pushed through the Senate, at least as it currently stands.
However, aside from this attempt at election overhaul at the federal level, there are quite a few interesting election-integrated developments happening across several different states.
In fact, let's start talking about the one in...
Oh, sorry.
Hello?
Yeah, hey Roman, it's me.
No, I'm just kidding.
I wanted to take a quick second and introduce our sponsor for today's episode which is an awesome company called American Hartford Gold.
They're run by Patriots and what they do is they sell physical gold and silver that they can deliver directly to your doorstep or they can deposit it directly into your IRA account making it super simple for you to own.
Now, I don't have any qualifications to offer you financial advice But I will tell you what I do.
And for the last five years now, I just set aside a portion of my salary every single month to buying physical gold and physical silver because I think it's a phenomenal hedge against inflation.
Because, I mean, with all these trillion of dollars worth of stimulus bills, with this Congress right now is debating several trillion dollars worth of infrastructure spending, our national debt has ballooned to close to 30 trillion dollars and seemingly no one is talking about this.
Honestly, I don't have much faith in the future of the American dollar as the global reserve currency.
However, physical gold and physical silver have withstood the test of time.
I mean, they had value 5,000 years ago, they have value today, and I believe they'll have value 5,000 years into the future.
That's at least what I think.
And American Heart for Gold is a phenomenal company.
They're one of my personal gold dealers.
Super friendly staff to work with.
They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
And right now, to viewers of Facts Matter, they're offering a special.
Depending on how much you buy, they'll offer you $1,500 worth of free silver, and they'll even send you a safe so that you can keep your precious metals at home, knowing that they are safe and sound.
So check them out.
The link will be in the description box below, or you can give them a call at 866-242-2352, or you can text Roman to 65532.
American Heart for a Gold, thank you so much for sponsoring this episode.
Now, Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's talk about Nevada.
Five days ago, the governor of Nevada signed into law a new bill which will allow for permanent mail-in voting for the entire state.
Now, before reaching the governor's desk, this bill, which was officially called Assembly Bill 321, it was passed along purely partisan lines in both the state assembly and the state senate, which in Nevada, the Democrats control both chambers, and so the bill was successfully passed.
Among several other things, under this new law, every registered voter in all of Nevada will automatically receive mail-in ballots delivered to them via the post office unless they send in a written request opting out of the system.
Furthermore, this new law also requires that county and city clerks, they establish ballot drop boxes at every polling location throughout the state.
And this new law also allows for same-day voter registration.
Now, in terms of the requirements for voter identity, this bill actually did not change much from what was already there, According to this new law, it allows first-time voters to either vote by mail or at polling locations after registering with a photo ID or with a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or document issued by a governmental entity, including a check which indicates the name and address of the person, but not including a voter including a check which indicates the name and address of the person, Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to Steve Sisolak, who is the governor of Nevada,
He's a Democrat.
And we asked him about his thoughts on this new mail-in voting law.
And he got back to us with this statement.
At a time when state legislatures across the country are attempting to roll back access to the polls, I am so proud that Nevada continues to push forward with proven strategies that make voting more accessible and secure.
And to give you a little bit of background on this measure right here, after the election of 2020, Republican lawmakers, not just in Nevada, but across the entire country, they began to push for new and stronger laws that limit mail-in voting, that strengthen voter ID laws, that eliminate same-day voter registration, and so on, saying that these policies will strengthen the integrity of our elections.
However, on the flip side, Democrats call these policies voter suppression, and they have been instead moving in the opposite direction, such as what they're doing here in Nevada, enacting laws which make universal mail-in voting the law of the land.
Now, if you'd like to read a more detailed breakdown of this new law out in Nevada, that link will be in the description box below this video.
And, by the way, it's not just happening in Nevada.
Let's talk about Vermont.
Two days ago, the governor of Vermont signed a similar bill into law, which mandates that all registered voters in the entire state receive mail-in ballots.
This is the bill right here.
Upon signing this bill, the governor of Vermont, whose name is Phil Scott, by the way, he's a Republican, he had this to say.
I'm signing this bill because I believe making sure voting is easy and accessible and increasing voter participation is important.
Having said that, we should not limit this expansion of access to general elections alone, which already have the highest voter turnout.
Governor Scott then went even further and said that the state should actually expand the law even more.
Here's what he said.
For greater consistency and to expand access further, I'm asking the General Assembly to extend the provisions of this bill to primary elections, local elections and school budget votes when they return to session in January.
So this new bill, which was just signed into law, it essentially codifies the actions that Vermont officials took back in 2020 amidst the pandemic.
Under this new law, the state is required to send general election ballots to all active voters ahead of the election, it will allow voters to cast ballots by mail, and it will allow voters to have the option to take ballots to polling places to vote early or to cast their ballots in person on election day.
And furthermore, the law also provides a mechanism for correcting defective ballots.
And by the way, besides the two states that we've discussed already, Nevada and Vermont, five other states in the country, which are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, and Washington State, they also conduct their elections entirely by mail.
Now, if you'd like to read more about these new laws out in either Vermont or in Nevada, the links to that will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And lastly, as we already discussed on several previous episodes, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episode, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
They essentially made it almost impossible for us to monetize our content.
And that is, by the way, outside of any type of censorship and throttling that we already experience.
And so we here at the Epic Times, we took action and we decided to create something very cool.
It's called Epic TV. It's our brand new no-censorship video platform where you can find all of the awesome Epic Times video programs like The Larry Elder Show, Crossroads with Joshua Phillip, American Thought Leaders, China in Focus, Life and Times, Real Talk, and our show Facts Matter.
And like I mentioned earlier, on there you will find exclusive episodes that you will not be able to find here on YouTube.
So that link will be right there at the top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful world through honest journalism based in truth and tradition.
Now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Subscribe to this YouTube channel if you haven't already in order to get this type of honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed.
While you still can.
Also, you can subscribe to Epic Times Roman over on Instagram.
Well, follow me at Epic Times Roman over on Instagram.
We can get some behind-the-scenes stuff and also research as I'm making it.
I usually post it on there.
You can follow me there.
And lastly, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
▲
Export Selection