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Nov. 12, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
09:25
William Briggs: The Price of Panic
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My guest is a man who has quite a remarkable biography here.
He has a PhD in mathematical statistics, calls himself a data philosopher.
He was a professor at Cornell Medical School and a meteorologist with the National Weather Service and played third base for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
That is quite a resume, sir.
It was first base.
Oh, I hate getting that wrong.
I really do.
I heard you were so good, you alternated third base and first base.
Utility infielder.
Yes, utility.
And now I should say your name.
William Briggs, who has a great website.
A really great one.
WMBriggs.com Sir, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
Where do you live?
In New York.
New York City?
Yep.
Are you a masochist?
It has been claimed, yes.
Okay, just checking.
Why someone...
No, no, I mean, I ask this of all those with your views.
See, I live in L.A., and you could theoretically ask the same question, but I am surrounded by people who are kindred spirits.
I don't believe, or maybe I'm wrong, are you surrounded by people who have the same values as you do?
Absolutely not.
Almost very few.
Very few in number, but escaping is a different thing than desiring.
So, one of these days.
I see.
So you were a professor at Cornell Medical School?
I was, yeah, a while ago.
What was your field?
Statistics, biostatistics.
Oh, so even there was biostatistics.
So we got two subjects, doctor, professor, epistemologist, third baseman.
We have two subjects.
One is the voting statistics issue, and the other is COVID-19.
We'll begin with the voting.
So in a nutshell, what do you believe?
I don't think anyone could say what they know, unless I'm wrong.
What do you believe happened in some of these states with regards to honest or non-honest voting?
Well, look, we could use statistics to try to find anomalies, strange occurrences, things that look like they should not look.
They're indications of potential fraud, but they're not proof of fraud.
In order to get that, you have to look deeper than just the statistics.
Statistics is only a tool to guide you towards discovering where fraud may have taken place or where it may not have taken place.
So it enables you to sort of concentrate your efforts.
That there is fraud, though, is sort of certain in many ways.
I mean, there's...
There was this 2012 report from Philly Magazine, for instance, that acknowledged Philadelphia's long history of voter fraud.
They reported in some of the districts in Philadelphia, I think it was 54 districts that had received absolutely no votes for Romney at the time of that election and all for Obama.
And they had turnout rates of 94%, 95%, 96%, which are absurd turnout rates.
And they were lamenting the commonness of how cheating was prevalent in Philadelphia.
And we know that this kind of stuff happens.
I mean, look at Chicago.
Look at the history of Chicago.
Look at Detroit.
Look at all these Democrat machine towns in which we know that there's cheating going on.
It has been for a long time.
So this election, of course, is much bigger, and so we have to expand our looks out from just these cities.
And there's a lot of stuff, like you say, going around everywhere.
Some of it good, some of it less good, and there's a lot of enthusiasm.
But we have to be real cautious about these things because, you know, you could use these tools, but if you're not real familiar with them, you could end up crying wolf a little too often.
So, if you were under oath, and you were asked to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, and yet it was still an opinion question, would you say under oath, I believe that there was enough cheating to have turned this election?
B, I don't think there was enough cheating.
I think C at this point.
We just don't know yet.
I mean, there's lots of indications.
I lean towards A, but we don't have enough information yet.
We have to get more data in and analyze it in a very thorough and systematic way.
There's lots of, you know, helter-skelter kind of stuff going on.
We need to really...
Focus on the same questions in lots of different jurisdictions, so we have good comparisons and so forth.
Right now, there's indications towards there being fraud.
I mean, I think it's probably, and even highly probable, but I wouldn't swear to it at this point.
No, no, swear to that you believe it.
You couldn't swear that there is.
That was not one of my options.
I want to just make that clear.
I believe there's cheating because there always has been.
There always has been.
There's always been admitted cheating.
Right, but has it been election-determining cheating?
It has, yes, in the past.
In this case, like I say, there's just not enough information yet.
What would you look for now?
Now I would look for all of these.
You'd have to go very systematically in each of these contested states.
And look for the same kinds of things.
This question has been studied, and people know what to look for to find evidence of fraud.
And we would look for those kind of measures.
Some of them are complicated to explain.
Some of them are easier.
For instance, we could look at, I'll give you one anecdote, in Chester County in Pennsylvania, which has got predominantly Republican registration.
Anomalously, overwhelmingly voted for Biden, had 200-some thousand votes in Biden's favor over Trump, which was not at all expected in comparison with last elections, like the election in 2016. Well, what happened in that county in 2016, do you recall?
Well, that was against Trump versus Hillary.
Yes, I know.
Trump did much better.
Well, much better.
These are the kinds of anomalies that we can look at.
Forgive me.
Did he win it?
Or he just did much better?
Did he win that county?
No, he didn't win that county in 2016, but it was a very minimal difference.
And now it was a 200,000 vote difference?
Yes.
Well, that's an interesting question.
Any fair-minded person would have to say, how did that happen?
How do you think it happened, by the way?
That's not the statistical question.
That's exactly right.
So that's something we can't say with statistics.
You've got to say, okay, here's something strange that happened.
Right.
No, no, I understand.
That's why I understood that.
All you can do is go and look.
Here's what I think has probably happened.
Because of the corona doom, all of these states leveraged mail-in voting, which is very loose.
And unaccountable sort of system.
You know, in Michigan particularly, I've heard anecdotal reports, only anecdotal reports, like up to half the ballots in some areas were mail-in ballots, and that anybody who wanted a mail-in ballot was allowed to have one if they wanted for fear of this virus.
And so these things are really, really difficult to find out.
They're really unaccountable.
And so how could cheating happen?
If you have on the voter rolls, for instance, registered Democrats for people who haven't necessarily shown up to vote in an election or something like this, and you mail them, you legitimately mail them ballots, and they weren't necessarily going to go to the polling station to go vote, and you only do this to registered Democrats, and these people return the ballots, there'll be genuine returned ballots, there'll be nothing wrong with them.
They'll be legitimate.
But you've sort of weighted the system and who you've sent the mail out to.
So we really have to look at the accounting of who they sent the mail-in ballots to.
All right.
Please stay with me.
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