I had to drop in on HornFans to see whether anyone was talking about Dr. C's analysis. Sure enough...
When I first saw that this lawsuit had been filed, I assumed it would be based on cleverly disguised sophistry. Nope. There is nothing clever disguising the sophistry.
This link is to the brief Texas filed with SCOTUS. The 1st 20 pages or so are the brief itself, then the page numbers restart at 1a, which is Dr. Cicchetti’s declaration.
He starts with a comparison between Georgia’s presidential election results in 2016 and 2020 (pages 3a-4a). His analysis is premised on the idea that a certain fraction of voters support Republican candidates and a certain fraction of voters support Democratic candidates. He then compares the 2016 election results to the 2020 election results and analyzes how likely or unlikely it is that votes taken from that static voter pool, randomly distributed, would come out so drastically different. In his words, he determined “the likelihood that the samples of the outcomes for the two Democratic candidates and two tabulations periods were similar and randomly drawn from the same population.” His answer – “less than one in a quadrillion” -- is undoubtedly correct, but it is irrelevant. It would matter if the pool of voters remained unchanged, voters held static opinions, and the candidates were indistinguishable. But we would all agree that 2020 was a very different year from 2016, and that changes in voter opinions can be explained in any number of ways. The entire analysis falls under the weight of such banal considerations as “did more Georgians hate Clinton than hated Biden?” or “was 4 years of Trump enough to turn off a few percent of Georgia voters?”.
Dr. Cicchetti then moves to an analysis of the blue shift in Georgia (pages 4a-5a). He tests the possibility that votes before and after 3:10 a.m. on November 4 could be so different despite being drawn from the same pool. This analysis hinges on an assumption that the voter pool for the “before” period and the “after” period were indistinguishable. His conclusion is that “the Georgia reversal raises questions because the votes tabulated in the two time periods could not be random samples from the same population of all votes cast.” No ****, Sherlock. They weren’t random samples from the same population of all votes cast, because the later-counted votes were the mail-in ballots, which skewed Democratic for predictable and defensible reasons.
Next, Dr. Cicchetti turns to similar analyses in MI, PA, and WI (pages 5a-7a). I didn’t read these as carefully, but the analysis seems to be exactly the same as for GA.
I stopped reading at this point because this guy has no credibility. If there is anything in the rest of it that isn't as obviously refuted, I'll wait for the courts to say so. I expect the Supreme Court to toss this very quickly, 9-0. There is absolutely nothing for them to sink their teeth into.
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