Let’s complete the Region Four verification and put an end to these wild conspiracies

Dear Editor,

Conspiracy theorists are clamouring as a horde that somehow the topmost personnel in GECOM and APNU+AFC have stolen the 2020 election. That almost all of these theorists are also established critics or loathers of the government should surprise no one. But to sell their conspiracies, they are asking us to swallow two pills, the size of which is too large to pass the throat.

First, they ask us to gullibly accept that the GECOM and coalition riggers can distribute 24,000 votes across 450 SOPs (using approximate numbers) in a manner that can escape detection or suspicion. That is an average of 53 to 54 votes per an SOP. These numbers come from the following simple reasoning. Should we accept the PPP/C bogus claim of a 17,000 victory margin as a truth, and should we take the GECOM-declared 7000 victory margin for the coalition as a fraud, then to arrive at the “true” result of a 17,000 PPP/C win, the imagined riggers would need to perpetrate a turnaround of 24,000 votes (17,000 +7,000).

And if all SOPs for all regions except Region 4 have been verified as untampered as they have. And if 430 SOPs for Region 4 have been verified as untampered as they have, then the purported fraud could only be executed with the remaining unverified 450 SOPs for Region 4. So, according to the conspiracy theorists, the fraudsters have to mastermind the concealment of 24,000 votes within these 450 SOPs, a task that is impossible to achieve as it is stupid to attempt. We can therefore spit that pill out.

As regards the second oversized pill, the conspiracy theorists, led here by ANUG, claim that the roughly 51,000 vote advantage that the PPP/C enjoys over the coalition when the votes of all the regions (except Region 4) are summed cannot be surpassed by the Region 4 input.  On the contrary, that advantage could easily be wiped out and surmounted. In 2015, the coalition won Region 4 by roughly 43,000 votes. In 2020, with a demonstrated larger turnout of coalition supporters (for instance, 3000 more votes in Region 10), overcoming a 51,000 vote deficit is well within striking range. No need here for phantom voters, as ANUG ridiculously asserts. Higher registration and higher turnout among coalition supporters in 2020 can easily explain the 7000 margin of victory for the party. That conspiracy pill too we can spit out.

Let’s complete the verification and put an end to these wild conspiracies.

Yours faithfully,

Sherwood Lowe