Clark County clerk refutes claim that vote tallies were wrong

Aug. 11—NEILLSVILLE — A new video released by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell claims that hackers from Beijing had switched nearly 24,000 votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Clark County in the November 2020 election.

Clark County Clerk Christina Jensen found the video, titled "Absolute Proof," to be laughable. First and foremost, fewer than 15,000 votes had been cast in her county, and Trump won it handily. Out of 14,898 ballots cast there in November, Trump obtained 10,002 votes to Biden's 4,524, with other candidates receiving the rest.

However, Lindell's video has garnered Jensen some unexpected, national attention. She was featured in a CNN report last week.

"Somebody sent me an email shortly after the election and said for me to check this out," Jensen said Monday. "The very first time I watched it, I just blew it off. I didn't think anything of it. But then, people started to come up to me on the streets and asked me about it. It angered me, that false information was out there."

Jensen stressed that the Clark County vote total was accurate, with no fraud or outside interference. She rejected the ideas floated in Lindell's video, which claimed vote totals were altered by outside entities.

"For starters, none of our election equipment is ever connected to the internet," Jensen said. "We don't 'modem' anything. We email in our results."

Additionally, three of her municipalities were randomly selected, and those 836 votes cast were examined during a routine audit.

"The Wisconsin Election Commission did audits," Jensen said. "They physically hand-counted these ballots. We didn't find any errors. We came up with the exact same votes for those candidates."

Jensen was surprised when CNN officials sent her an email July 16 to discuss Lindell's video. Reporters there followed up with a phone interview.

"I was watching CNN for that story to come out," she said.

Jensen, an elected Republican who has served as county clerk for 20 years, said she patiently explains to people how Lindell's claims are inaccurate. She's been unable to convince many of them that the election wasn't stolen. So far, she hasn't experienced any backlash from contradicting his account.

"No one has been negative to me," she said.

Lindell, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, has emerged as one of the most vocal boosters still pushing false claims about the 2020 election. In a series of self-published videos, Lindell has advanced a theory that foreign hackers broke into the computer systems of election offices like Clark County to switch votes — in what he has described as the "biggest cyber-crime in world history." His video said 23,909 votes in Clark County were switched from Trump to Biden.

Numerous cybersecurity experts have debunked Lindell's claims, saying there is zero evidence of any type of successful hacking of last year's election results. Dominion Voting Systems, a voting-machine manufacturer, has since sued Lindell over his claims that the company was involved in switching votes from Biden to Trump.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also rejected Lindell's video, pointing out that the film claims that Adams County also had 17,000 votes switched from Trump to Biden, but that county only has 13,595 registered voters.

However, several Trump supporters believe the claims in the video. The Waukesha County GOP Party hosted a "film screening" of the movie earlier this year.