Editor’s Note: As our readers know, we have partnered with the Oklahoma Liberty and Integrity Group to continue our work in exposing the truth behind election security in Oklahoma. We felt it is important to introduce you to the faces and motives behind the work at OKLIG.
Wendi Montgomery Dial
After November 3, 2020, I began looking into the issue of election integrity. The issues from that election in the ‘swing’ states were so obvious that I wanted to see what I could find to answer my own questions.
While researching the subject online, I found a group who was dedicated to looking into the same issues on the social media site Telegram. I joined and volunteered over a thousand hours in 7 months as a writer and researcher for Oklahoma First Audit, where my background in science and teaching could be utilized to help analyze data and help explain the anomalies the group was seeing to the public, as well helping others communicate with their lawmakers regarding their concerns about our elections.
With Oklahoma Liberty & Integrity Group these skills are being used, as well as my experience with volunteer organizations. As a principal co-founder of OKLIG, partnering with Ryan Hill of Standard Excellence, we understand the need to educate the public on the subject of election integrity in Oklahoma as well as legislation that has been filed by receptive lawmakers in Oklahoma to build public support behind the bills that we know, through our experience and research, are needed to ensure that our God given right to vote is protected.
There is no legitimate government without the consent of the governed, and, in keeping with the legacy of my grandfathers that fought in the Revolution, it is my intention to uphold that simple truth for my children and our fellow citizens residing in the great state of Oklahoma.
I love my country and am proud to be doing this work. Ryan Hill and I are working together traveling across Oklahoma and speaking to our neighbors anywhere we are invited about the number one issue that affects all of us.
Without our votes being counted as we cast them, we merely have the illusion of consent of the governed. Unfortunately, in Oklahoma, first in the previous group we began this journey with, and now as our own entity, we keep running across data and information that leads to the inescapable conclusion that the elections in Oklahoma from November 3, 2020 as well as more recently need investigation and forensic audit and analysis.
For example, we need to repeal the legislation from last year that allows Oklahoma to purchase E-Polling books and join the ERIC system and take all of our election related materials off of computerized devices until our officials can prove to us our elections are secure and properly conducted.
Given the data, it is the duty for us as citizens to hold our public officials accountable and take responsibility for our own elections. We have many concerned lawmakers and they need our help and support for their bills so we can begin to get confidence back in our election process.
Ryan Hill
If you had asked me to describe the election system in Oklahoma prior to 2020, I would have told you I thought it was very secure, and how grateful I was we didn’t use some of the electronics other states had. Then that November I watched Election Night turn into the morning, with counting stopped in several states. The leads changed in swing states, taking Biden over the 270 electoral vote threshold. All the major media outlets called the race, and by the end of January, Joe Biden was sworn in.
While that’s a pretty cut and dry description, the detail of events in between Nov 3, 2020, and January 20, 2021 reveals the election was anything but. States delayed certification for weeks, counting for days on end.Some races were still not decided more than a month later. Video of irregularities surfaced and many began to question the counting process, which was unusually closed off to observers.
Something was clearly going on in the swing states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and more. Procedures were changed with or without legislative approval. Voters claimed Sharpie-type markers were given to fill out ballots instead of pens. Poll workers and observers testified in sworn statements that batches of ballots were brought in to counting areas from back rooms. There were so many similar examples throughout the USA that it appeared coordinated. You don’t ever want to think that about your own country’s elections, yet in state after state the reports added up.
What About Oklahoma?
Back in Oklahoma, everything was much calmer. We finished counting on the night of the 3rd, and certified the results in 10 days. There were no reports of Detroit TCF Center madness or Fulton County Georgia false water main breaks that led to partial building evacuations in the middle of the count.
It may have been this relative smoothness that prompted me to look at our own election. I had hoped that by digging into the results, and getting an understanding of how the election turned out throughout the state, combined with my knowledge of the state from living here since the early 2000’s, my concerns would be alleviated. Instead, I found the opposite. The deeper I looked the stranger things became.
First, as I went county by county, entering in the breakdown of results, by absentee mail-in, by early vote, and by day-of, I started to see a pattern repeating in the absentee mail-ins. They were heavily slanting in the direction of the Democrat Party, no matter if the county was “strong red” or more of a blue one.
After completing all the counties, I could make some observations and graph them at the statewide level. I found a way to illustrate this disparity between how Democrats and Republicans performed, county by county. I could plot the ratio, or percentage of Biden to Trump votes, for example. Or, I could look at the difference between how they did on Election Day (the people who waited in line and voted on Nov 3rd) compared to how they did on the mail-in.
It turns out that in all 77 Oklahoma counties, no matter if Trump or Republicans “won” the county (Trump won all 77 in 2016 & 2020), Biden or the Democrat candidate ALWAYS had a better performance at the mail-in contest.
Doesn’t this just mean Democrats are “better at mail in campaigns”? Well, it could be true nationally, and historically it’s been more blue states implementing vote-by-mail systems, which would also explain the national trend. However, in Oklahoma this isn’t the case. For comparison, in 2012 the Republican ticket led by Mitt Romney outpaced Barack Obama in mail-in voting by 25,317. In 2016 vs. Hillary Clinton, Trump outperformed her in at least 7 counties, with a total of 26,600 more mail-in votes statewide. But in 2020, Joe Biden had 58,000 more mail-in votes than Trump, and again, in every single county, his “mail in performance” was better than his Election Day performance (ex: Tulsa County, Biden gets 34% of the vote on Election Day, and 64% in mail-in, 20% higher). Where did all these votes come from?
If the matter was as simple as Democrats having a better campaign, one might expect to see the fruits of that campaign show up in key campaign areas, such as the largest counties Oklahoma, Tulsa and Cleveland, but NOT in parts of the state that would be of less value. In other words, if the results came from Democrats simply doing a better job, they wouldn’t be seen throughout the state consistently, because the real world doesn’t work that way.
What’s more, how can the surge of votes be explained amid a loss of 106,000 registered Democrat voters over the previous 4 years?
For me, this was just the beginning, as in coming months I would begin to compare this information with what others have collected and analyzed, both in and out of the state. Instead of being reassured of the integrity of our election system, my concerns were elevated. The problems we’ve heard about in other states like Arizona and Pennsylvania are present here. In some cases, we use the same procedures or the same type of electronics.
Fortunately, I don’t think the issues in Oklahoma are as egregious, nor as embedded, as other places, but that’s exactly why we should be getting ahead of this issue – BEFORE we become the next Georgia.
In our next articles we’ll go into more of the details of what the issues are, why they are significant, and most importantly what can or should be done about them. The form of government in our country depends on the faith of the people which it represents. All of its power comes from the people, so it’s absolutely essential that the VOICE of the people, their vote, is safe, secure, and accurately recorded.