A week after a red tsunami crashed over America, the Republic feels like it's drowning amid the chaos of President-elect Donald Trump’s catastrophic cabinet picks, Democrats flogging themselves for failing the people, and pundits still positing theories of just what went wrong with Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential run.

But we may be missing the big picture, the one staring us right in the face. The most scandalous, constitution-rattling news quietly breaking in the undercurrent of all the name-and-blames, and what-a-shame noise. The answers to last week’s earth-shaking election results may be the most sensible and obvious:

Donald J. Trump cheated.

Bigly. That’s the prevailing theory among many cyber security analysts who suspect the 2024 election was rigged in Trump’s favor primarily through election tabulator software and database hacks that flipped and created “ghost votes” for Trump in seven swing states. One computer hack expert suspects Elon Musk’s Starlink did play a role.

“In my view it is a near certainty the results have been changed at a scale which reversed the US presidential election,” asserts preeminent computer hacking expert Stephen Spoonamore, in a "Duty To Warn" letter addressed to Vice President Harris on Thursday. “I am stating a hand count will most likely show you did win.”

Citing unresolved election software breaches in 2020 that targeted vote counting equipment used in nearly 70% of the country in the 2024 election, and numerous election day anomalies favoring Trump in swing states – where some 70 bomb threats linked to Russia disrupted voting in mostly Democratic counties –  scientific minds are questioning and probing myriad election day malfunctions.

And these experts, well-versed in the malicious ways of nefarious actors, are sounding the alarm to save the Republic. A group of computer security experts associated with Free Speech for People filed their own “Duty to Warn” letter with the vice president on Wednesday. Both Spoonamoore and the group of seven are urging Harris to call for an investigation into the 2024 election tabulations and demand hand recounts. 

“You should reverse your concession, call for both a full investigation of criminal activity and demand hand recounts in all seven swing states,” writes Spoonamore. “In my professional view there are multiple and extremely clear indications the presidential vote was willfully compromised.”

Unresolved Security Breaches

The “Free Speech for People” computer scientists, in their letter to Harris, focused on: “serious election security breaches that have threatened the security and integrity of the 2024 elections,” dating back to the weeks after Nov. 3, 2020 when Joe Biden won the presidency.

The group references records, video camera footage, and deposition testimony from the 2022 civil case that outlines the 2020 post-election breaches of Georgia’s voting system by operatives for Trump’s then attorneys, including Sydney Powell and Rudy Guilliani. Powell and Guilliani eventually faced charges in Fulton County for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The breaches in Georgia were part of a broader scheme, the scientists maintain, to duplicate voting system software in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Arizona, leaving vulnerable central servers, tabulators, and “highly restricted election databases” of both Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Dominion Voting Systems, the two largest voting system vendors in the United States.

The “most severe election security breach publicly known,” is how the Free Speech for People group described the crimes.

In December of last year, some of the same computer scientists were among 22 voting experts who warned of the existing election security software vulnerabilities in a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, and FBI among others. But members of the group said there’s been no evidence of a federal investigation. Of note, Senate Republicans have blocked past efforts to pass election security measures such as the SAFE Act.

Bullet Ballots

Spoonamore believes “a capable and skilled series of exploits, electronic tools, and hacks were used to change the presidential vote in all seven swing States” and that vote outcomes were reversed in at least Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. 

Much of the alarm revolves around so-called "bullet ballots". They are cast ballots with only one candidate in a single race selected and no down ballot choices made. Approximately 600,000 bullet ballot votes were logged for Donald Trump with no down ballot choices made in the seven swing states.

Spoonamore, whose services are sought by corporations, banks, and governments to guard against the mounting threat of computer hacking and fraud, called those bullet ballot numbers in swing states “historically unprecedented.”

“In every swing state, but not in their neighbor states, voters cast 100x or more Trump bullet ballots than any prior election,” wrote Spoonamore Tuesday on “X”, a week after election day. “Where are these precincts? They are where to audit.”

North Carolina stands out as the “most extreme case” for suspect votes. More than 350,000 voters cast votes for Trump and no other race on their ballots, making up 11% of Trump bullet ballots. In all these cases, Spoonamore emphasizes, these suspect votes would have been electronically created with no paper record. Hence, the dire need for hand recounts in the seven swing states.

“It is very simple to prove this (fraud),” wrote Spoonamore in an “X” post. “Take the two most outlandish precinct results from any county and just hand count the ballots. They won't match the tabulation outputs.”

“A Bespoke and Programmed Outcome”

Some of the concern in swing states was also triggered by: exit polls not aligning with vote preferences recorded; an extraordinary number of split ticket votes for Trump in heavily blue counties; and the number of votes tallied not matching up with the number of ballots handed out.

In Centre County, PA, where Spoonamore lives, the number of voters who took ballots compared to the scanned output of vote totals were off by 13,000 votes, and led to the “outright reversals of several county races,” Spoonamore wrote in his first “Duty To Warn” letter to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro days after the election.

Spoonamore suggests the phony votes would have been surgically added to totals in limited jurisdictions, through hacks requiring access well in advance of election day to as many as 100 tabulators within only the seven swing states to create a “result too perfect for belief.”

“It is a bespoke and programmed outcome,” commented Spoonamore. 

As one of two experts who exposed the hack of Deibold voting machines in Ohio, a state key to President George W. Bush’s reelection win over Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry 20 years ago in 2004, Spoonamore is familiar with the various ways of hacking voting software and systems. 

He believes in this case the tabulation systems at the county level were hacked at least months in advance of the 2024 election and that the “hacks were embedded into the code even before the code was installed.” That dovetails with the “Free Speech To People” scientists’ concern that software stolen in 2020 and shared with other Trump allies and agents was never reclaimed.

Musk’s Starlink 

In his letter to Harris, Spoonamore drops another bombshell, speculating that Elon Musk’s Starlink – already the subject of election rigging conspiracy theories – could have played a role in rigging last week’s election. Spoonamore theorizes that Musk’s $1 million lottery luring people to go online and pledge to vote, was possibly an exploiting means of acquiring voters names and addresses, to ultimately create a “pool of ghost voters” consisting of pledged voters who didn’t actually vote.

That pool, Spoonamore postulates, then could have been incorporated into e-poll book and precinct data, ultimately creating fake votes for Trump. Spoonamore notes that e-poll books are typically linked to the internet, such as Starlink. The hack would enable real time monitoring of the vote. Interestingly, Joe Rogan claimed Musk knew the outcome of the election day vote hours ahead of the final call. 

As for the bomb threats, they were distracting measures that chased off voters temporarily, anyway. But what other purpose they served is unclear. Again, the hacked software that would introduce ghost ballots in these same precincts and tabulation centers — which were the focus of the threats — would have already been in place and would be activated remotely.

Spoonamaker suspects the hackers may have wanted a disruption so they could claim the “chain of custody” was broken and the ballots were flawed — an argument that could be used as a pretext to prevent hand recounting. Of course, that theory could work in reverse as well, he notes, serving to heighten the demand for hand recounts.

While some automatic audits will occur in states, the computer experts like Spoonamore, argue that the probes will be insufficiently thorough or timely enough to get accurate results before vote certification deadlines which varies by state (only Arizona’s audit laws provide for timely hand counts if discrepancies are discovered.) 

“The only guarantee for rigorous effective audits of the vote in the swing states will be through candidate-requested statewide hand recounts,” the scientists’ letter states.

What Mandate?

So what about Trump’s alleged mandate? Have the American people spoken "loud and clear" as Republicans are suggesting? Or have Fox News-manifested, Russia-driven domestic criminal syndicate, in-your-Facebook black ops brainwashing and the hacking of our elections systems spoken instead?

One has to wonder why Trump before the election many times told his followers that he didn’t need their votes. He said to the hosts of Fox & Friends: “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” as Rachel Maddow pointed out. Did he know that the fix was in and couldn’t help bragging about it?

In the meantime, Democrats like Senate leader Chuck Schumer seem resigned to the 2024 election results. “I hope that after last week we can put to rest the fantasy of stolen elections and rigged outcomes. Four years ago, the losing side refused to accept the will of the people and it led to a violent insurrection… this year we will not go down that dark and violent path.”

But requesting a recount/audit in swing states where there are consistent inconsistencies doesn't equate to the "dark and violent"path that MAGA's took on Jan. 6, 2021 — fueled by Trump’s impulsive, baseless, courts-affirmed Big Lie about a stolen election.

This election challenge is based on many manifested anomalies that defy reality and would be a travesty to justice to flippantly dismiss. And we can’t forget, after nearly a decade of hellish, destructive demagoguery, that a lifetime grifter knows only how to lie, steal and cheat.

Legally and peacefully requesting hand recounts is simply playing by the rules of justice — and defending the Republic. Indeed, the future of the United States of America teeters at the precipice. Destruction – or a last minute new lease awaits. The people must demand hand recounts in all seven swing states. Now.

(Kevin McKinney is a former crime reporter living at the South Jersey Shore. His opinions have appeared in The Hill, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Counter Punch, Knoxville News, McClatchy-Tribune newspapers, and local weeklies. His poetry, art and short fiction have been published in local literary anthologies. He tweets @WriteFight99)