FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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Date: September 29, 2021 Contact: Chad Houck, Chief Deputy Secretary of State Phone: (208) 334-2852

Boise, Idaho — A team from the office of the Idaho Secretary of State will be in Bonner County on Saturday, Oct. 2. This visit extends the Secretary of State’s review begun earlier this month of a document presented to the state dubbed “The Big Lie” and originating on a website showing a 2021 copyright from Michael J. Lindell, the founder of MyPillow, that alleges statewide digital manipulation of Idaho’s vote totals. The document infers that all 44 of Idaho’s counties suffered digital or electronic manipulation of their respective results, not changing the total of ballots cast, but only re-assigning Donald Trump votes to Joseph Biden, and providing a ballot count difference.

The team from Boise will work with bi-partisan representatives to conduct a hand recount of the November 2020 ballots from several randomly selected Bonner County precincts. Bonner County’s alleged difference is 2,244 votes, and Bonner County Clerk Michael Rosedale, upon seeing the spreadsheet, volunteered for the selective review. “If I have something wrong, I want to know about it. If I don’t, I want that exposed too,” says Rosedale. The Bonner review will be monitored by several registered electors from both parties, and conducted by Secretary of State staff. It will either be livestreamed on Bonner County’s website, recorded and released, or both.

On September 23rd, the Office of the Secretary of State completed similar reviews of the ballots in both Camas and Butte counties, two of Idaho’s smallest counties that count ballots manually tallying the votes by hand in a journal. Those reviews found margins of error of well under 1% in both instances, significantly shy of the reported error rate of roughly 8.4% alleged in “The Big Lie.”

“We are thankful that Bonner County is giving us an opportunity to demonstrate what we have said and continue to stand by,” says Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck, who will be overseeing the process in Bonner County, “that regardless of how a county counts their ballots, Idaho’s processes, checks and balances produce free, fair, and accurate elections that Idahoans can trust, and that if you provide our office with specific data or information to the contrary, we will look into those concerns.”

The video feed for the recount will be available starting on Saturday morning at 8am at https://cloudgis.bonnercountyid.gov/portal/apps/sites/#/electionshub

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ABOUT LAWERENCE DENNEY

Lawerence Denney has served the people of Idaho since 1990. His public service began as a representative in District 13 and, following redistricting, then became a representative in District 9 until 2014. During this time, Denney served two terms as Majority Leader and three terms as Speaker of the House before successfully running for state office as Idaho’s Secretary of State. He is currently in his second term as Secretary of State.