TOBLER: The Stats Say Jeff Crouere Is Still Wrong

Editor’s Note: a guest post from Louisiana Deputy Secretary of State John Tobler, continuing a rather vigorous discussion of election integrity in which he and Hayride contributor Jeff Crouere have engaged over the past few weeks. See the previous installments of that conversation here, here and here.

In yet another attempt to create controversy where none exists, Jeff Crouere again pens a swing and miss.

It’s important to point out that Jeff spends, what I imagine, is an average of 6-7 hours a day on political talk, reading, recording and writing. During periods when he can get a political candidate as a client, he presumably spends even more. I say this not to belittle Jeff’s political “empire,” but to help explain why Jeff portraying himself as a victim isn’t valid. He’s up to his eyeballs in politics.

In his recent post, Crouere presents a premise that my response has racial overtones because I included the full demographics of the four west Jefferson Parish precincts he highlighted. I guess he didn’t notice the first line of each of the stats that detailed the party makeup of those precincts, only to gravitate to race as an explanation?

I’m not going to continue to beat Jeff up over all the things he’s gotten wrong, again. But I will call out the most glaring items.

Remarkable Ratio and Perfect Precincts

Crouere talks extensively about precincts with “remarkable ratios” that need further investigation from the 2020 Presidential election in Louisiana. Because he wants to inflame you, he lists a number of Biden precincts as exemplar.

On one hand, 99 precincts went 95%+ for Biden, but 180 precincts went 95%+ for Trump. Additionally, there were some “perfect precincts” in this election. Based on Jeff’s original and follow up conclusions, this is a sure sign of something untoward.

Further, in 2020, 5 precincts went 100% for Biden, but 38 precincts went 100% for Trump! The combined vote of the 5 perfect Biden precincts was 47 votes, with the highest “perfect Biden” precinct providing a total of 22 votes. The result of the 38 “perfect Trump” precincts totaled 714 votes, with the highest “perfect Trump” precinct giving 130 votes to Trump. In fact, 7 of the “perfect Trump” precincts gave Trump more votes than the highest “perfect Biden” precinct. I’m curious, do we just investigate those Biden precincts?

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Readers should note the ratio in the last column of the table below. Back in his first article, Crouere noted Biden over Trump ratios of 21 to 1, 35 to 1 and 58 to 1 were unbelievable. Note the ratio of Trump votes to Biden votes in the following precincts:

Parish Ward Precinct Biden Trump Biden % Trump % Total Votes Cast Ratio
St. Landry 4 13 2 325 0.61% 99.39% 327 163:1
Vernon 7 3 1 118 0.83% 97.52% 121 118:1
Allen 5 5 2 171 1.15% 98.28% 174 86:1
West Carroll 0 6 4 262 1.49% 97.76% 268 66:1
Evangeline 4 4020 2 128 1.52% 96.97% 132 64:1
Lasalle 9 2 2 123 1.60% 98.40% 125 62:1
Livingston 0 05C 2 117 1.67% 97.50% 120 59:1

So, Mr. Crouere, I’m puzzled as to whom you think we are supposed to investigate? When confronted with the facts, you go back two years to the governor’s race and try to inflame conservatives even further. Again, I prove that you don’t understand these things that you attempt to expound upon for hours each day.

The fact is that we do take every issue presented seriously. We investigate many things –all the things– that might appear to be anomalies in each and every election, because the law doesn’t give us the discretion to ignore any of it. You mischaracterize my response as attacking, when I am merely pointing out the inaccuracy of your claims. We have an election compliance unit (ECU)  that is made up of veteran investigators who are all POST certified members of law enforcement and we worked with the Legislature to add two additional members to this team this year. We treat our elections processes and procedures as an evergreen effort that continues to change and grow based on lessons learned and emerging threats. Last, many of our senior staff, including the Secretary, regularly receive classified briefings from a myriad of federal agencies and CISA.

Elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and we protect them with the care, respect and gravity they deserve. Cavalierly, Crouere seems to think that our office doesn’t get the fact that if elections are left unprotected, this would not only end our republic, but Louisiana’s sovereignty as well. We understand that very well and we do a damn good job of keeping our elections clean.

John W. Tobler
Deputy Secretary of State, Communications
Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin

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