New Forensic Expert’s Report Out of Allegheny County, PA Shows Duplicate Ballot Scans and over 50,000 “Non-Unique Tabulator CVR Numbers”

February 23, 2023

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Back in September of 2022, forensics expert Erich Speckin discovered over 10,000 ballots in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County that had substantially inferior image quality compared to other ballots provided:

“Many of these images have similar defects in the printing/copying process which would indicate common source of production, but different than the remaining examined ballots. Clearly in the mail in counting area, a random printing defect that may have existed in mailing out of ballots could not consistently come back and be counted on the same scanner. Therefore, a printing defect on the printing side of the ballot creation is not the likely cause of this anomaly.”

The Gateway Pundit reported on these findings and noted that the 10,000 ballots was almost the margin of victory for Marine Corps veteran Conor Lamb in his race against Army veteran Sean Parnell.

Parnell claimed that, on election night in 2020, his staff determined it was mathematically impossible for Lamb to win and Lamb had allegedly called Parnell on election night to congratulate him on his victory. But as the numbers began to trickle in for the days and weeks after the election, that changed.

Speckin is a forensics expert in document examination with 29 years experience. Back in 2016, “517 Business and Life” wrote an article about Speckin’s history in forensic document review, including work with police departments, attorneys, and consultation with the TV Show “CSI”.

He has reviewed election cases, including ballots, “in many instances in [his] career…” Yesterday, Speckin released another report after further investigation into the data found on the tabulator’s CVR forms obtained through Right To Know requests from Allegheny County.

From the report:

In this case, I had access to PDF scans of the front and back of each ballot as well as the corresponding
PDF of the detail for the counting and tabulation of each ballot. Every ballot has a unique individual
identifying number associated with the counting and is part of the PDF file name.

…

As a result of only having images, the forensic examination that can be performed is limited. It is always
more desirable to have the original evidence when possible.

Finding 1:

In his investigation, Speckin found that there were over 170 instances where a ballot appeared to be a duplicate scan. This conclusion was derived from comparing all of the marks on ballot images provided by the county and comparing them with ballot images that have the “same markings.” The review of duplicate scanned ballots is ongoing and could potentially increase. AuditTheVotePA is reporting their analysis thus far is at 252 examples.

Finding 2:

The Cast Vote Record (CVR) was the next focus in his review. In this part of the investigation, Speckin found that “in this county, over 50,000 instances of non-unique tabulator CVR numbers were found on eight of the tabulators used to scan and count votes.” Speckin continues that some of the CVR numbers were found twice and some were found three times. Below is notated the duplicate counts with their coordinating CVR number as well as the triple counted examples:

Attorney Stefanie Lambert joined the Conservative Daily podcast to talk about the findings in Speckin’s report. Below is a clip of that podcast. You can find the full length version here.

Speckin made recommendations to further examine the ballots based on his findings:

Based on the forensic findings, it is my opinion that further work and review of the original ballots
should be conducted to determine what significance these findings have on the whole of the
approximately 700,000 ballots cast.

1. Review the original ballots that were scanned and created the submitted images to
determine the scope and correlation of these printing anomalies or if an alternative theory
could exist that cannot be determined at this time.

2. Determine the details of the scanner with the anomalies noted in the user, time frames
scanned, and cause of the poor image.
a. Then to determine the origin of the original ballots if the issue is with a printing
defect.
b. Conduct a study of the voting pattern (if any) in these areas compared to other
correctly printed ballots.

3. If the original ballots are made available:
a. To look for impressions of ballots into each other. In the normal course of voting
these would not be filled out one on top of each other.
b. Using infrared light to determine if more than one ink formulation was used to
complete a ballot and which races contained different inks to see if there is any
pattern of additions or not.
c. In ballots that are color printed to review the CPS code and yellow printed dots to
determine similarities in the machines and the timing for the printing process.

Erich Speckin also had a role in the examination of ballots in Maricopa County from the 2020 audit. Last year, he joined citizen journalist Nick Moseder to talk about his findings of 36,000 ballots in Maricopa in this podcast.

The Gateway Pundit has reached out to Allegheny County Elections for comment on the report. We will update the article if any response is given.