Thread re one of the things I keep seeing thrown around as evidence of fraud is the manner in which the media has reported vote totals. The allegation that has raised its head more than any other I've seen concerns massive tranches of votes coming in 100% for Biden. 1/

The most important, number one thing to note about the media's reporting of results is that IT IS NOT RELEVANT AT ALL. The media isn't even getting the figures you've been seeing from official tallies, they get them from private data companies. 2/

These companies are not official and nothing they say counts. They provide a service to media orgs by calling counties and getting totals and inputting them faster than official state websites do... 3/

And they greatly increase the speed at which we get results because most states will not record partially-reported precincts on their secretary of state website. 4/

So even if the NYT, based on data they got from Decision Desk HQ (or wherever) reports that 130K votes came in just for Biden (and 0 for Trump), that doesn't mean it actually happened or that Biden will actually get credit for those votes. 5/

Ditto for the fracas the other day when 538 erroneously stated that a tranche of about 23K votes came in for Biden. Decision Desk HQ could come out today and say that Trump just recorded an additional 5 million in PA and it would not make a whit of difference. 6/

All that matters is the official totals that are being recorded by the Secretary of State, and there is no allegation - not by the Trump campaign or anyone else - that officials have actually opened and recorded a batch of ballots that went 100%-0% for Biden. 7/

Secondly, a lot of the allegations I have seen are just flat-out wrong. I've seen thousands of people tweeting the vote vs. time plotted graph from 538 with the supposed "vertical lines" showing huge dumps of 100% Biden votes. 8/

Again, number one thing about these charts is that they don't matter, they are not official, and do not reflect actual vote tabulation. But even then, what people are saying about them is wrong. 9/

Look at the charts more closely. Here is an example of the Michigan chart. Your eye tricks you into believing that, other than the obviously vertical line on Biden's chart, that it is a curve. It is not. Look at it more closely. It is a series of horizontal and vertical lines. 10

Most of those lines are not as pronounced as the huge one where a lot of Wayne county votes came in at once. But they very much exist, as you would expect on a graph that plots votes recorded against time. 11/

Second thing to note about this is that if you read the chart properly, you can clearly see that when the large tranche of Biden votes came in, THERE WERE ALSO TRUMP VOTES RECORDED. 12/

Follow the x-axis to the point of the large vertical line and follow that directly up to the red Trump line. Look closely. Zoom in, if you need to. You can clearly see that at the same time Biden got a huge jump, Trump also got a (much smaller) increase in his vote total. 13/

This chart does NOT show a huge batch of votes that came in JUST for Biden. It DOES show a huge batch of votes that came in that were OVERWHELMINGLY for Biden. 14/

At the point everyone is obsessing over (and at the same point on the Wisconsin chart, although it is much harder to see because the lead changed at that point), the chart shows Biden getting a huge chunk, and Trump getting a much smaller (but not zero!) chunk. 15/

This, we know, came from a huge batch of votes being recorded from Wayne County. If it seems somehow nefarious or out of bounds to you that a batch of mail-in votes from one of the most Democratic counties in America went hugely for Biden, I can't help you. 16/

Now it may well be that we find that some of these votes are not legit and if the Trump campaign uncovers proof of that then I welcome it. But the chart itself does not show or even suggest fraud - and as I keep repeating, since it's way more important, it DOES NOT MATTER. 17/

The same thing can and should be said about the tranche of 135K votes that was mistakenly recorded in some media outlets due to a typo from one of the data entry companies and then immediately corrected. 18/

Same points apply. 1) Doesn't matter, isn't official, not binding, and no corresponding evidence from Trump campaign or observers on the scene that it actually happened and 2) those number totals were quickly and immediately corrected, even if they had mattered. 19/

Finally, it is not evidence of fraud that Biden is making up massive numbers in states where mail-in ballots are being counted second, instead of first. The overwhelming evidence, from across the country, is that the mail-in votes skewed heavily blue. 20/

All across the country on election night, in most states where the early/mail-in vote was recorded first, Biden had huge leads. He had a huge lead in Ohio. He led pretty big in Texas. Even in states that turned out not to be super competitive, he won early/mail in. 21/

I realize that it's frustrating to watch this happen but if MI and PA and WI had recorded those votes first like most other states, we would instead have seen a huge lead for Biden on election night, and would now be talking about whether Trump could catch Biden in those states

That would probably be preferable to where we are now for a ton of reasons but it isn't how it happened. The fact that the vote coming in now is heavily skewed Biden isn't evidence. ESPECIALLY given where they're coming from. 23/

Now, is it POSSIBLE that those totals have been artificially inflated by Dem officials? Sure. The Trump campaign should be allowed to inspect ballots and make that case. 24/

But a heavy-Democratic skew among mail-in votes in urban precincts is not evidence of fraud, it's evidence of normal voting patterns. The end. 25/