'The Big Lie' spurs Bonner County vote recount

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SANDPOINT – A recount of Bonner County’s presidential election votes will begin on Oct. 2 at 8 a.m., according Idaho Secretary of State, Lawerence Denney. The recount will be recorded and live streamed.

The recount, announced Wednesday by Denney, was spurred from a document submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office by Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow. Lindell submitted a document originating from his media platform, FrankSpeech, to Denney alleging that every single county in Idaho had been digitally hacked. Lindell alleges that the hack changed presidential votes cast for Donald J. Trump, to votes cast for Joe Biden, also known as “the Big Lie.” For Bonner County, the Big Lie allegedly switched 2,244 presidential votes in Bonner County from Trump to Biden. The document shows a list of IP addresses that did the hacking, the date and time the hack supposedly occurred, and county IP addresses that are believed to have been hacked.

Bonner County Clerk Mike Rosedale is determined to put an end to the confusion. In his own press release on Sept. 21, he said local voter fraud did not take place.

“While I generally agree with Mike Lindell’s focus on massive voter fraud in 6-plus key states, his facts regarding Idaho quite miss the mark. Well, completely miss the mark,” Rosedale said.

Rosedale assured voters that the process in the county was safe and secure.

“Idaho’s election equipment is not in any way, shape or form connected to the internet, we have what is called an ‘Air Gap’ expressly for this purpose. There is no connection to the outside world at all with our scanners or tabulators. No Wi-Fi. No Bluetooth. No cable. Nothing.”

“Seven of our counties actually don’t use scanners or tabulators … any electronic computing equipment at all … they hand count using paper tally books. I’m not sure how Lindell’s organization claims to have been able to get an IP address for paper tally books ... Those precincts have what the Secretary of State calls the ‘Flintstone Gap’. It didn’t happen.”

“What this means is that somebody just assigned a magic vote fraud number to all Idaho counties. Their goal appears to make a big splash. Shock and Awe. Every State. Oh the Horror. This should make your blood boil (Democrats AND Republicans).”

In a press release, Rosedale explained the investigation from Idaho’s Secretary of State. All of the vote tallies in each county followed the same mathematical formula. They took the total canvassed votes, multiplied it by 0.420625, rounded down to the nearest whole number, and entered that total as the number of ballot votes swapped from Trump to Biden. The Big Lie alleges that all counties had exactly an 8.4% rate of voter fraud.

“What is really infuriating is that nobody from the Lindell group ever called Bonner County Elections to even find out what type of equipment we use, that we weren’t connected to the internet, how we communicated with the Secretary of State, nothing. No verification or validation of claims. For the sake of apparently trying to make a big splash, he tarnished the reputations of possibly thousands of counties across the USA. Smooth move Mr. Lindell.”

The recount on Oct. 8 will be done by hand by a bi-partisan committee conducted by Secretary of State staff, and monitored by several registered electors from both parties.

“We are thankful that Bonner County is giving us an opportunity to demonstrate what we have said and continue to stand by,” said Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck in a Wednesday press release. Houck will be overseeing the recount process in Bonner County.

“Regardless of how a county counts their ballots, Idaho’s processes and checks and balances produce free, fair, and accurate elections that Idahoans can trust.”

The livestream will begin on Oct. 2 at 8 a.m. and can be found by going to cloudgis.bonnercountyid.gov/portal/apps/sites/#/electionshub .