The "Evidence" Catch 22 in Election Investigations

"You have no evidence. All your numbers are speculative and just based on suspicion. Therefore an investigation is not warranted, until you have real evidence".

But evidence is OBTAINED via investigation!

I am so sick of hearing this Catch 22 argument. Investigations are supposed to be STARTED because of suspicions and "funny numbers", which then leads to evidence (or lack thereof).

When an alleged criminal is brought to trial, and his DNA is found on a murder weapon, and the forensic scientist says "hey -- there is one chance in a billion that the DNA belongs to someone else" they call this evidence.

But in election investigations, they say such statistical analysis is NOT evidence. They say it is "weird numbers" which does not amount to any evidence, and that no further investigation is warranted.

The issue is simple, really. What is really going on here is a gut reaction -- emotion, not logic. So many people HAVE TO BELIEVE that our system has integrity (or that their favorite candidate won) that they REFUSE to look at any evidence (or funny numbers) that might prove otherwise. To prove otherwise might shatter their entire world view. And THAT is more threatening than stolen elections to them.

Whenever the raw exits are outside the MOE, the election should be recounted by hand.

Take as long as it takes. No more faith.

In a democracy we count the votes.

If citizens are concerned that the vote count isn't accurate, then we recount the votes.

The endless discussion of potential explanations, debate about whether there is enough evidence to investigate or recount, the statistical analyses that lead only to more statistical analyses -- must end.

The burden of proof is not on the citizens to demonstrate that there was an error in the election count, the burden of proof is on the people who count the votes to publicly demonstrate that they count was accurate.

There should not have to be amateur statistical analysis (which are mostly nonsense) in order to request a recount. Any concerned citizen should be allowed to request a recount in any town in which they voted. On a larger scale, there should be mandatory random recounts performed automatically to verify that the system is working. If any evidence of vote-count errors is found in either random samples or in towns requested by individual voter, then a larger sample must be taken - expanding to the entire state if error is found not to be isolated (or perhaps if requested by a candidate.)