A Duty to Warn

In 1960, a handsome young senator and war hero from Massachusetts was trying to become the first Catholic president of the United States. His father, who was deeply involved in his son’s campaign, was worried about the closeness of the race with Richard M. Nixon, a Republican from California. When John Fitzgerald Kennedy won the narrow victory, speculation abounded that his father had bought votes from the mob in Chicago and they had cooperated with the political machinery of Richard Daley, the city’s mayor, and his electoral architecture. The proximate cause of JFK’s victory, however, was his campaign’s effective use of television, strong voter turnout driven by enthusiasm for his candidacy, and the Democratic Party’s established urban political machinery.

Nonetheless, according to some researchers and historical accounts, Joe Kennedy collaborated with the Chicago Outfit, a mafia group that had control over a small number of wards in the city and was led by Sam Giancana. Investigators concluded the mob did not have the reach to influence such a broad election in Illinois and that, further, claims Jimmy Hoffa was involved were false. Hoffa was known to dislike the Kennedy’s and likely would not have offered his union’s help to elect JFK. There were, however, investigations of results in Illinois, Texas, and West Virginia. The findings indicated there were some “abnormalities,” but nothing significant enough to affect electoral outcomes. There was no definitive evidence or proof of the presence of organized crime present in any of those states.

Suspicions JFK’s election might have been stolen retained currency on the basis of a quote circulated that supposedly came from his father. Joe had devoted millions of dollars and much of his influence to help his son become president, and the assumption was that he would, in fact, buy the votes needed to win, if they were on the market. Speculation was that the mob knew a soft touch when it saw one and cut a deal with Joe to get him ballots favoring JFK, for a price. Joe was said to agree to the arrangement with organized crime but was uncertain of the final costs. Reportedly, he told his contact, “I want just enough to win and I’m not paying for a landslide.” The statement is, however, likely apocryphal and part of political folklore rather than a documented account.

Donald Trump did not invent the concept of election fraud, though he appears to have been the only candidate to spend undisclosed amounts of money on five dozen lawsuits to make arguments in 60 courts, which all rejected his allegations as without basis. When the country was barely aborning in 1800, however, the fourth presidential election, a rematch between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, was marred by both parties making charges of vote tampering in New York, voter intimidation, and procedural delays to influence results in closely contested locales. Three times in the nineteenth century presidential contests were clouded with allegations of backroom deals, buying votes, and various types of corruption. In one instance, the House of Representatives had to vote to pick the president and another involved the passage of a measure known as the Compromise of 1877, which gave the job to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for ending the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

After JFK, forty years later there came Bush vs. Gore and “hanging chads” on “butterfly” ballots, charges of voter suppression and inconsistent counting standards that led to the “Brooks Brothers Riots,” college-age men flown in by the Bush camp to complain about tabulations at voting centers. The U.S. Supreme Court gave Bush the win when recounts in Florida were shut down. Bush’s reelection was no less controversial when voting machine vulnerabilities were reported in Ohio in 2004, which led to unusual voting patterns and discrepancies between exit polls and official tallies. In 2016, President Obama refused to tell the public the FBI was investigating Russian tampering with the race between Hillary Clinton and Trump, and when he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump let fly with wild assertions of widespread voter fraud allegations that included ballot-stuffing, improper handling of mail-in ballots, and manipulation of vote counts. Audits and recounts and lawsuits proved it all false.

There comes now in 2024, Stephen Spoonamore, a technology executive, network engineer, and expert, who has issued a “duty to warn” letter to Vice President Kamala Harris, insisting it is a near certainty the election was hacked and that Trump did not win without the fraud. His letter is a consequence of the 2015 federal directive to all agencies and contractors associated with intelligence and financial agency technologies to warn of suspicions of hacking. Spoonamore, who has worked as a CEO and CTO of seven high tech companies, and says his “clients have included numerous governments DoD, DHS, Dept. of State, F100 Financials and F500 Industrials” wrote to Harris, “In my professional view, there are multiple and extremely clear indications the Presidential vote was willfully compromised.” The results, he insists, “have been changed at a scale which reversed the [2024] U.S. presidential election."

Spoonamore’s analysis of returns led him to believe that false results were inserted into swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The votes, he charges, were manipulated by the insertion of “bullet ballots,” which display only a vote for Trump and leave all the other races blank. The hack Spoonamore describes leads to what he calls results that are “improbable in the extreme and well tailored to the benefit of your opponent.” He claims to have uncovered 600,000 of the bullet ballots for Trump with no down ballot choices selected by voters.

“This historically unprecedented set of numbers found in the 2024 swing states is absent in every other state,” he wrote Harris. “In AZ, MI, NC and WI the effect of these drop-off votes reverses the voters' will and even more improbably always pushes the winning margin beyond the mandatory recount numbers. It is a result too perfect for belief. You should reverse your concession. Call for both a full investigation of criminal activity and demand hand recounts in all seven swing states.”

Spoonamore said the hack is not technically complex and had to involve a database of registered voters who did not vote. His theory is that Elon Musk’s million dollar daily giveaway may have been part of the scam because voters needed to give their home addresses to be eligible. Those could then be matched against a registered voter database and turned into legitimate looking votes. A database of pledged supporters of Trump with addresses is an essential part of the setup.

“The easiest method to execute is also the easiest to discover by hand-recount. In a few jurisdictions where the tabulators either had network connectivity, approved or otherwise, or where a person on the team had physical access to the tabulation machine, the Trump votes that were added to the ePollBooks, would need to be added to the tabulators. At which point the ePollBooks and the tabulation totals would match, having been digitally stuffed with demographically credible voters for Trump.  But there will be no paper ballot for these votes. A hand-recount will quickly discover the fraud.”

Spoonamore got the attention of the fact checking website Snopes.com when he said the fraud in North Carolina was the “most extreme” and that it was possible to see from public results that over 350,000 voters cast a ballot for Trump and no other race. The claim, Snopes reported, is false. 

“According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections' website, as of Nov. 21, 5,722,556 voters cast ballots. Of those, 5,699,152 ballots displayed votes in the race for president. The website also reported that 5,592,243 ballots bore votes for the state's governor's race. A comparison of the numbers for total votes and the gubernatorial race would reveal the maximum number of possible ‘bullet vote’ ballots for all presidential candidates. The difference between the two numbers is 130,313 votes, a count nowhere near the 350,000 votes stated by Spoonamore. Trump received 183,048 more of North Carolinian's votes than Harris.”

Which means, even with bullet ballots subtracted, Trump had enough votes to win.

Snopes also deconstructed Spoonamore’s numbers regarding his assertion that Arizona was stolen, where he said, "AZ - 123K+ 7.2%+ of Trump's total vote. Enough to reverse the outcome." “However,” Snopes reported, “the latest election results for Arizona showed that out of 3,429,637 total ballots cast, voters cast 3,389,319 total votes in the presidential race and 3,347,964 votes for U.S. Senate candidates. The difference between the total number of ballots and those voting for Senate is 81,673 votes, a count smaller than the more than 123,000 votes asserted by Spoonamore. Trump received 187,382 more votes in Arizona than Harris.”

Which was also more than enough to win even without bullet ballots. Snopes found the same discrepancies and contradictions in the other swing states Spoonamore said were fraudulent. But why not do the hand recount? It is not that expensive, would take a short period of time, maybe a few days, and would improve Americans’ belief in the integrity of their election systems. Trump ought to be in favor of such a move because it would offer further verification of his win, and Harris has nothing to lose. Also, election officials at the state level can prove they know how to conduct safe, secure and fair elections.

And right now there are too many things about American politics that are hard to believe.