I'm a smart, mathematically-trained person (Princeton cum laude, Stanford Ph.D., Bell Telephone Laboratories) trying to apply that intelligence to the 2020 Presidential election in the United States.

     I'm having a hard time believing anybody could believe Joe Biden really should be President based on the votes in 2020. If I were a Joe-Biden fan, then I would be treading lightly hoping not to hear the other shoe drop. I would also go to bed knowing that the right thing to do is to honor the voters of the United States of America and to admit Donald Trump won the election.

     This is not a partisan piece like most of my essays. At least I'm trying not to color my descriptions with my own pro-Trump feelings. I'm simply addressing what observations we have and what would be the most-reasonable conclusions to draw.

     Let me explain my mindset. I go into anything I care about with suppositions about reality, a process of prediction, and an expected result. When the actual results don't match my model I ask myself what supposition has the highest likelihood of being full of shit. (That's a scientific, technical term, "full of shit.")

     Let's take an example from my retail-science work a couple of years back. We always figured (supposition) that shoppers buying stuff on promotion were price sensitive, more so than those paying regular price. In our sort-of-economic language, we say the demand of discount, promoted products is more elastic than those at regular shelf price. We use our mathematical maximum-likelihood models to derive (prediction process) an optimal price. We figured (expectation) the calculated optimal promotion-discount price would be less than regular price. We got some so-called optimal promotion products higher than regular (actual results), not what we expected. We looked at the chain of reasoning from model through optimization and realized the weakest link (full of shit) was the assumption about promotion price elasticity. We figured it was far likelier that promotions were less elastic than regular price than our models being wrong or our algorithms being faulty. Continued investigation confirmed our confidence in this reasoning. So what does that mean? We're not 100% sure of anything, but it seems that the product simply being on sale is more important than how deep the discount is. Our response was to recommend giving those products the smallest discount that would stimulate shopper response to the discount promotion. Now let's apply that mindset to the 2020 election.

     I believe Donald Trump got at least ten million more votes than Joe Biden in our presidential election and should have won the election by a large margin according to our legal election process. Somewhere between Election Day 2020 November 3 and Inauguration Day 2021 January 20 we found ourselves with Joe Biden being sworn in. I've had otherwise-smart people look me in the eye and call me a conspiracy theorist for thinking something foul was afoot during that time. Let's apply the same science as in my example above to this election.

     1. First supposition, people who voted for Trump in 2016 are going to vote for him again. I know my passive preference for President Donald Trump increased when I saw him in action. Trump supporters I know wish he had balanced the budget and really "drained the swamp" by sending Democrat crooks to prison, but he got results they respect and admire. (I turned from a grudging voter to a full-blown Trump supporter.) Here are a few reasons as perceived as positive by Trump supporters why I expect prior Trump voters became stronger supporters.

     2. Whatever made people vote for Hillary Clinton was less for Joe Biden so he would have a smaller turnout. The Clintons had a rich history in politics (never mind how they got rich from it) with a successful presidency, a senate seat, and a highly-visible tenure as Secretary of State. Hillary's advertisements were impressive and impactful. On the other hand, In a history of boring Vice Presidents Joe Biden stood out as a more-boring Vice President with nothing else to attract voters. His advertisements were sappy and silly. The one I heard over and over said Trump was responsible for 200 thousand deaths, people are afraid of getting sick, so vote for Biden in a sleepy, sloppy voice with no reason on earth why they would be safer with him. In case he would have a following at the voting booths, he didn't campaign for the final two weeks before the election, no appearances, no rallies, nothing. (I'll get back to that final two weeks from the other side later on.) Voters voting for Biden because he's not Donald Trump would be the same voters who chose Hillary for the same reason with no reason to believe there would be more with more intensity. My expectation is a smaller number of votes actively supporting Joe Biden in 2020 than there were supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016.

     3. My third expectation is significant conversion from Democrat to Republican among lower-income people who now have jobs they didn't have before. My own take is that 2017 through 2019 are the first years of genuine American economic growth since 1966. We have had periods of slower decline like President Reagan's first term being a breath of fresh air after the Carter catastrophe, but never a real surge of productivity and prosperity. For those comparing Trump to Hitler I'll point out Trump has been "Making American Great Again" through less government and more private-sector jobs in contrast to the vision of National Socialism making Germany greater by government control of manufacturing, which is called fascism. The measure of lower-income prosperity is median net worth or median family net worth. This statistic plummeted from $118.6 thousand in 2007 to $65.8 thousand in 2013 under Democrats. A similar statistic rose from $104 thousand at the end of 2016 to $121 thousand at the end of 2019 under Trump and Republicans. Lower income people who are now finding themselves with jobs and a higher quality of life are likely to vote for the President who was in office during that change. Of the tens of millions living significantly better than six years ago when Democrats ruled the roost, I expect several million to change from D to R on Election Day.

     4. Fourth, small business owners enjoyed tremendous growth during the Trump presidency. More customers had more jobs and more disposable income, fewer on food stamps and welfare, taxes were lower, regulations were less oppressive. My own company had two obvious changes. When Democrats ruled the roost up until 2014 every job offer we extended turned into a new hire. After that our applicants clearly had more choices and they often chose other jobs over ours. We also had a surge in business as Trump took office. It seems that clients felt more comfortable taking appropriate risks to expand their own businesses rather than "hunkering down" and weathering their own storms. With thirty million small businesses in the United States enjoying considerably better times for their business, I figure both their owners and their employees experiencing better times and I figure several million of those people switched from voting Democrat to voting to re-elect President Trump.

     5. Fifth, minority-group members, homosexuals (gay and lesbian), and even women in the workplace are enormously better off with their issues being less political. When Donald Trump rescinded their protections, he rescinded employer apprehension about hiring minority-group members, homosexuals, and women. As a result people in these groups are seeing something close to fair treatment they haven't seen before. (A person complained to me that Trump's cabinet of the best people he could find was mostly white men. That person also ran a company of mostly white men when he hired the best people he could find. We could talk about the reasons it ended up that way, but he got the same result as Donald Trump when he sought the best people.) It's more than just more-equal treatment in hiring, it extends to how people are treated "out there." My friends of color tell me they get a lot less flack from law enforcement than before, fewer stops for DWB (Driving While Black) when they're out at night. There's just a lot less hate "out there" than there was before. Not being hassled, not being put down, facing less discrimination, and not being treated as inferior in the workplace are all good reasons to vote for the fellow in office when it happens. Reduction of hate has a strong and immediate positive effect. I figure several million of voters in these groups switched to Trump.

     6. The last item on the above list is something really wonderful for me, something I've waited 19½ centuries for, in the same league as the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989. A bright, insightful friend pointed out to me that President Trump was critical to making the Middle-East agreements happen by marginalizing the Palistinian pseudo-nation in the process. Having flights flying over Saudi Arabia from Tel Aviv to Dubai is something I only dreamed about for a very long time, the kind of thing I put in the same category as talk of the coming Messiah in the future. In a world of rapidly-rising anti-semitism and burgeoning hate all around this is the sort of thing that should make all of us, especially those of us who are Jewish, sleep well at night. I'm seeing strong, new Jewish sentiment for President Trump on Facebook with large numbers of Jewish members supporting him. With six million Jews in the United States almost all Democrats four years ago and with a noticeable pro-Trump population today, I figure one or two million of those changed from Democrat to Republican for his support for the State of Israel.

     7. Fear is a strong motivator and many Jews I know are afraid. The Jewish population still hasn't recovered from the Holocaust eighty years ago. We have seen the growth and violent riots of three violent, racist, anti-semitic groups, BLM, BDS, and ANTIFA, all action arms of the Democratic Party. (When I clicked their donations pages, they went to the Democratic Party donations page.) We have seen similarly-recent rise of the Mod Squad. The anti-Jewish climate that has risen to prominance in western Europe this century is rapidly growing stateside. While I myself am terrified of the prospects of another holocaust, this time in the United States, I have seen only a small shift in Jewish political sentiment from this increasing threat. Once the Trump-pro-Isreal factor is taken into account, I don't think there's a significant shift to Trump out of fear.

     One buddy raised the conflict at the Capitol on 2021 January 6 to explain an increase in votes for Joe Biden. While I don't dismiss the importance of this event, I find it hard to believe it affected an election two months earlier. (I put this in the same category as the global-warmists who blame warming in the 1920s on fossil fuel use in the 1960s.) On the other side, I know few Democrats who changed their view based on the Democrat-run riots around 2020 June or the huge, non-violent pro-Trump gatherings all over the country.

     I have to ask. Am I the only one who figured the mischief makers 2021 January 6 at the U.S. Capitol weren't Trump's people? Trump rallies with thousands upon thousands of people have been peaceful with flags waving and people yelling while Democrat rallies from 2020 June through Election Day have been riots with burning buildings along with people hurt and killed. Given the importance to the Democrats of making President Trump look bad, isn't the first, most-logical assumption that these people are going to be there and are going to do what they can to destroy President Trump's reputation? (It's just like the people right after Trump was declared the winner who painted Swastikas on Jewish graves in 2016 November and blamed Trump's supporters. Hate doesn't come from the winners.) In case anyone was wondering, even knowing he lost the election 59% to 61%, even though he knew he was cheated out of his second term, President Donald Trump left the White House peacefully and respectfully and there were no riots like there were from the other side when Trump won.

     So how do we measure these effects to see if we believe them? I figure polls are unreliable after all the Democrat pro-Hillary sources called the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton while two more-neutral organizations called it for Donald Trump. Pre-election gatherings are a reasonable indicator once we remember that they tend to underestimate conservative sentiment. The usual wag line on the subject is, "Conservatives have jobs." Remember the 2016 million-woman march? Remember the Kavanaugh protests? Has there been anything conservative on that scale recently? Driving shortly before the election I found myself in "Trump Trains" of trucks and cars with flags waving, I saw of pictures on Facebook of Trump gatherings, and the only pictures I saw of Biden gatherings gathered from both sides of the political aisle showed a few people sitting far apart amid empty chairs.

     One other predictive variable is that incumbents tend to win elections. My expectation was that Joe Biden was a sacrificial lamb similar to Bob Dole in 1996 or Fritz Mondale in 1984. The choice of "Sleepy Joe Biden" with his pictured pedophile predilections and his sloppy, slurred speeches clearly pointed that way.

     Clearly all the signs were for an overwhelming Trump victory. The probability of a legitimate Biden election victory were comparable to a blizzard in Phoenix in July. Assuming a fair election, the Democrats' best plan would be to take their lumps in 2020 and work toward a strong platform in 2024.

     So what happened? We went to bed 2020 November 3 looking at a small-but-significant Trump victory and woke up to find several states had shifted from Red-Trump to Blue-Biden during the night for a claimed Biden victory. From 2016 to 2020 Trump votes went from 63 million to 74 million, about what I expected. Over the same four years Hillary Clinton's 66 million votes became Joe Biden's 81 million votes with amazingly high voter turnouts.

     So what happened? My suppositions could be wrong, I suppose. But here's the thing. We know Democrats turned an election from Richard Nixon to John F. Kennedy in 1960 by "stuffing the ballot boxes" in West Virginia and Illinois. I know personally of pro-Obama shenanigans in Philadelphia in 2008 and 2012. Sources I trust reported two believable events.

     First, these voting machines have software that counts votes. The initial Biden numbers seemed high even when they were trailing Trump in several key states like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Total turnouts were reported over 100% in many districts.

     Second, where that wasn't enough to get Biden victories, several states had sudden surges of Biden votes early Wednesday morning, hundreds of thousands of newly-counted ballots all of which, 100%, no exceptions, were for Biden. There were timeline graphs in several states like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin where Trump leads were instantly overtaken. There were stories with videos that I believe of Democrats counting votes with Republicans forced to wait outside. We heard about the same behavior and saw the same graphs in the two, later Georgia elections.

     For those saying an election predicted to be a record landslide for Trump just happened to turn out differently without any subterfuge, I'll point out that candidate Biden did almost no campaigning in the weeks preceding the election. Why would a candidate clearly behind make no appearances? My own conclusion is that he knew "the fix was in." Why go through all the effort of making appearances, especially when the candidate is more likely to embarrass himself than to promote his cause, when the election count is already predetermined?

     Maybe your sources are different and you don't trust the observations of fraud I mentioned. I would argue, using my scientific mindset, that the expected Trump majority is nearly a dead certainty and the Biden inauguration equally-certainly happened. What could have happened between those two events that doesn't involve election fraud?

     The obvious, honest, fair, correct thing to do in the wake of all this would be to have another election staffed by representatives of Biden and Trump (and Jorgensen if she wants to hire them or can get volunteers) where every voter shows up (just one time) in person with a photo ID checked against a list of legally-registered voters, perhaps at an embassy if a voter is traveling, and votes alone in a voting booth. Disabled voters who need assistance would have representatives of all candidates supervising any help provided. Similarly, representatives of all candidates would count the ballots and reach complete consensus on the numbers. (We can think of ways to do that, stacks of one hundred counted by all parties grouped into boxes of ten thousand counted by all parties aggregated into pallets of one million counted by all parties et cetera.)

     So we have a country strongly pro-Trump awakening with two things. First was a complete Democrat takeover of all three houses, Representatives, Senate, and White. Second is a comfort with cheating that will be impossible to overcome in future elections. Now that the cheaters and the referees are the same people, there is no opportunity for the people to be heard. In case an opportunity to be heard should arise, the popular Internet fora have silenced conservative voices.

     One person not following too closely just said, "Hillary Clinton should have been president not Donald Trump because Clinton had more votes then Trump did just saying." Assuming Hillary's majority was real (following obvious mischief from the Democrats in 2012 and 2008), the Electoral College legitimately gave the presidency to Trump in 2016. Donald Trump didn't get reported 60% of the vote and somehow get "gerrymandered" out of his victory by the Electoral College. Biden's party took a reasonably-expected McGovern-like, Mondale-like defeat and turned it into an inauguration.

     Analogy: two football teams play a league-championship game with no field goals, four touchdowns to six, and the team with six touchdowns is declared the loser. What hope do they have in that league for the future? Should they play by the rules and just work harder for next year? Or should they join or form a new, fairer football league?

     Our country is not a democracy and is not supposed to be a democracy. We are a constitutional republic with rules of conflict resolution and specific guideline values in our founding documents. Once every two years we choose people to represent those values in a nakedly-democratic election process. It is critical that this delicate moment of democracy be as fair and honest as we know how to make it.

     With a Republican Senate, a state-count Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and a conservative Supreme Court, the Democrats got away with turning an election. What are they going to get away with when they are completely in control of all judgment decisions? How corrupt will they be when the U.S. government is all theirs with no checks or balances anywhere?

     I don't care which side you're on, this should scare the shit out of all of us.