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Q&A of the Day – Did 2000 Mules Prove Widespread Voter Fraud?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: Submitted via Talkback
Bottom Line: Dinesh D’Souza’s recent release of 2000 Mules, is billed by D’Souza as a documentary film which exposes widespread, coordinated voter fraud in the 2020 election, sufficient to change the overall outcome. It’s a strong claim which supports former President Trump’s position – however, which wasn’t evidenced within the legal system by Trump’s team. I received today’s question after having said this in my top takeaways on Tuesday: It’s time to move on. Seriously. To the January 6th Committee. It’s time to move on. To Donald Trump. It’s time to move on. The ongoing January 6th show feels like a non-entertaining episode of the Twilight Zone. It’s a protracted version of what we already know. Yesterday the committee’s big “bombshell” was Bill Barr’s testimony that there wasn’t any evidence of widespread voter fraud and that Donald Trump didn’t want to hear it. Well, duh. That’s quite literally what he said publicly in December of 2020, and it's quite literally why he resigned as Attorney General. There’s nothing new here. And it's not going to effectively distract the average American away from having to cope with the worst affordability challenges of their lifetimes. It’s also not going to lead to the leftist dream of perp walking Donald Trump. But it's just as important that Donald Trump moves on. No matter what he thinks did or didn’t happen in the 2020 election it doesn’t matter anymore. But it also wasn’t for not. While there never was evidence of voter fraud sufficient to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, there was enough room for concern for 19 states to pass election integrity laws, including Florida. So, was the inability to prove widespread voter fraud a case of simply not having enough time to pull all of the facts together? Did D’Souza’s documentary prove voter fraud on the scale it claims? I’ve long been a fan of D’Souza’s work and have taken an interest in his latest work. At the same time, when it comes to credibility and facts I rely on my own research and work. As I always say – there are two sides to stories and one side to facts.
If you’re a longtime listener you probably know I’ve had an extensive background in covering election integrity issues, including playing an active role in specifically documenting, reporting and sharing the election fraud and related violations of law which occurred in Broward and Palm Beach Counties in the 2018 midterms – which aided in the ouster of both elections' supervisors. More recently I’ve been highlighting the 156 officially referred but unpursued cases of potential voter fraud – in conjunction with the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Information considered as part of Florida’s recently enacted voter integrity law which creates a statewide election fraud office to investigate cases across the state that local prosecutors won’t. The bottom line is that voter fraud exists, it should be taken seriously, and I most certainly do. At the same time, it's critical that the voter fraud bell is only rung when there’s clear evidence of misfeasance. When allegations of voter fraud are advanced, and they aren’t appropriately evidenced, it not only erodes the credibility of those associated with the accusations, it undermines the attention, coverage and reality of real voter fraud cases.
In evaluating the claims made in 2000 Mules, one of the most effective ways to address it – is by fact-checking a skeptical fact checker. There are no shortage of them, however I felt it best to evaluate one advanced by a mainstream media news outlet. Reuters fit the bill having recently provided a “fact check”. As stated by Reuters:
The 90-minute film "2000 Mules" sees D’Souza team up with True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit that describes itself as protecting election integrity (www.truethevote.org/about/), to investigate alleged voter fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. D’Souza’s documentary says Biden victories in swing states could be thanks to 2,000 people – or “mules” – who were hired by unnamed nonprofits - dubbed “stash houses” - to conduct “ballot trafficking”, i.e.: stuffing numerous drop boxes with potentially fake absentee ballots.
It also alleges that the so-called “mules” were paid $10 for every fake ballot they submitted. D’Souza and True the Vote analyzed surveillance footage of drop boxes mostly from Georgia, as well as “some” from Arizona, along with “geotracking” data purchased from unnamed brokers.
The “geotracking” data was gleaned from cellphone apps pinpointing device location and movements between Oct. 1, 2020, and election day, Nov. 3, for Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the documentary. Data for Georgia stretched until January, when there was a runoff vote.
The documentary alleges that by tracking phone locations to the addresses of five alleged “stash house” nonprofits and 10 or more drop boxes, the “mules” were identified.
The Reuters fact check enlists numerous experts to address the various aspects of “evidence” presented as fraud. The crux of the case advanced in 2000 Mules comes down to cellphone data purchased by True the Vote for $2,000,000. The data which is supposed to be the smoking gun in proving the fraud. Political Science Professor Kenneth Mayer told Reuters: The entirety of the claim rests on cell phone location data, which doesn’t remotely show that people were actually using the drop boxes.
If true that’s a problem because that would collapse the premise of the documentary. Dinesh states in the documentary that the cell phone data has the reliability of a fingerprint (saying in a recent interview that the accuracy was 12-18 inches). This is the key claim in 2000 Mules. If Dinesh is right, he’s really got something. If it’s not – the credibility of what’s presented is seriously undermined. Here’s what the expert interviewed in the fact check had to say about that claim: I have never heard that geotracking using cell phones could have errors as low as 12-18 inches. This range is way below the ranges reported by scientists and engineers. As is presented by Reuters: A research paper written by AT&T and Purdue University researchers in 2020 predicted that the average location error of 5G networks would vary from 2 meters to >10 meters. Note their results are simulated results in ideal settings, used for predictions. They are not real experiments, because 5G has not been available everywhere. In real environments the errors would be larger.
Right, so here’s the big issue for 2000 Mules even if every “mule” had a 5G enabled phone, and even under ideal conditions what’s asserted isn’t close to being possible. But there’s even a bit more to that particular dynamic. I have my own knowledge and experience with this. Ashley and I are avid hikers. Commonly we’ll use the AllTrails app to track progress on hikes. We both use different 5G enabled service providers and have 5G enabled iPhones. As recently as April when hiking, we observed at major landmarks the location services, showing where we were on the trail off by approximately .4 miles on one device and closer to a half mile on another. In fact, at one point, when checking location – Ashley thought we needed to turn around because of where we were in relation to the trail (after a brief convo with her where I promised I had a better read on the trail than technology we continued on our way – which was the right way).
So, we have scientifically studied analysis, expert analysis and I have my own first-hand experience with the technology in question. They all suggest the same thing. The cellphone data used for the documentary isn’t reliable in the way or to the extent it’s stated to be. So, in reality, there’s no evidence these were ballot “mules”. There are a myriad of reasons for the repeated patterns of going to and from the same location. They may have picked up on people who were going to and from work, working out, eating out, etc. And as for the few instances in the movie where people are shown via video to place multiple ballots in a box at one time. That’s legal under certain circumstances in the states where it was monitored. It’s worth a reminder that two of the states in question, Arizona and Georgia, are Republican controlled and were investigated by state. Neither found evidence of the misfeasance alleged in 2000 Mules.
As you’ll hear me say, if the premise of anything is false, anything built upon it is as well. So, there you have it. Voter fraud is real. It is a concern. There are 53 criminal convictions for voter fraud which have resulted from the 2020 election cycle. Additionally, we have cases like the 156 referred but unpursued in Florida. We need to get to the bottom of them. But as AG Barr has stated, there’s no evidence of fraud sufficient to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That remains true based on what’s been evidenced to date.