Well, this is embarrassing. When one is fighting to be president of the United States, it is often helpful to demonstrate that you know all the states and can keep them organized, even if we’re talking about one’s campaign team. Yes, we get it, Michigan and Minnesota are both “sort of” near each other, both play in the Big 10, and both start with “Mi” so of course, it’s … no, it is actually not hard at all to tell them apart and get them right on affidavits filed in court. It is really easy unless you are part of the Trump campaign team and you’re in a hurry. There is another possibility. It could have been on purpose, with the presumption that they were pretty sure no one would look too closely.
But we’re going with “mistake,” because we can prove the mistake, right USA Today [1]?
An affidavit from President Donald Trump’s legal team that claimed to prove widespread voter fraud confused two “M” states: Michigan and Minnesota.
The affidavit [2]was as part of a larger lawsuit [3] actually filed in Georgia by pro-Trump and conservative attorney L. Lin Wood that sought to discredit that state’s election results by pointing to alleged discrepancies and problems with Dominion Voting Systems [4].
If you are going to “discredit state election results,” it’s probably a good idea to get the damned state right! Is that asking too much of people getting paid significantly over $200 an hour? Evidently so.
Cybersecurity expert Russell Ramsland attempted to demonstrate that the “Dominion Voting Systems” election software caused problems in Georgia, Texas, and Michigan. If you think the software caused problems, imagine them getting the states wrong!
Okay. Take a shot.
Ramsland highlighted a number of “statistical anomalies and red flags” he claimed proved “that election results have been manipulated within the Dominion/Premier system in Michigan.” Sounds like a problem. Tell us more. Apparently, he went on to claim that a number of communities counted more ballots than they had voters, which would be a problem if they ever got their communities straight.
He needed to highlight communities in Michigan … but …
Many of the municipalities cited in the Michigan (MI) document, such as Albertville, Houston, Monticello, Runeberg, Lake Lillian, Brownsville, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, and Kandiyohi, are located in Minnesota (MN). The affidavit was filed Tuesday. A federal judge dismissed [5] Wood’s lawsuit on Thursday, which sought to halt the certification of Georgia’s election, saying it came too late and lacked merit.
Yeah, that’ll happen, especially when you’re almost surely in front of a Michigan federal judge, who likely has a pretty good idea a to what communities exist where, since they’ve heard witnesses from all over.
There is a lesson to be learned in here somewhere. Carl Sagan used to famously claim (about UFOs) that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. He might as well have added, “And you best be able to tell us where you got that evidence even if the states sound alike.”