Data scientist Gregory Stenstrom served as a GOP poll watcher in Delaware County and has testified that up to 120,000 ballots cannot be verified. Stenstrom — a former Naval Officer and combat veteran — laid out the irregularities he witnessed on election day and beyond at the Gettysburg hearings earlier this week. “What I saw as a forensics expert was an election process that was forensically destructive in the manner it was conducted,” Stenstrom said.
On election day, Stenstrom worked as one of the only GOP poll watchers in the city of Chester. Due to the large number of mail-in ballots being received and counted, Stenstrom wanted to go down to the counting room in Chester to have a look. All day he had been told that there were “10-20 GOP poll watchers down there” and that everything was “well in hand.”
When Stenstrom arrived at the building around 6 PM, he was denied entry. Stenstrom and his group were only allowed in following a legal ruling and were not able to enter until 11 PM. What Stenstrom described as “forensically destructive” was the process of separating the ballots from the envelopes then moving them to the other side of the room. This would effectively render a recount as a useless exercise as there would be no way to verify the validity of those ballots.
“What all I saw there was a chain of custody in all cases that was broken for the mail-in ballots, the drop-box ballots, the election day USVB card drives; in all cases the chain of custody and the procedures that were defined by the Delaware County board of elections were all, they didn’t follow one,” said Stenstrom.
Stenstrom then described how he witnessed uploading of USVB cards that contained mail-in ballots. Under the Delaware County election process, the cards were dropped off at polling places and uploaded by the voting machine warehouse manager. According to Stenstrom’s affidavit, the warehouse manager was walking in with “baggies” and was not being observed. Photos were taken of this and included in the affidavit.
Stenstrom objected to this and brought it to the attention of the elections clerk, as well as law enforcement officials who were present. “I objected and I said this person is not being observed, he’s not part of the process that I can see.”
All told, Stenstrom witnessed this uploading process a total of 24 times. The next day, he was told by an attorney that the process of leaving USB’s in machines for the warehouse manager to drop off and upload was standard election process. After conferring with U.S. prosecutor Bill McSwain and other law enforcement officials, Stenstrom was informed that this was not the case. Any more than two uploads is considered unusual.
Delaware County officials have denied that this took place, but as of today, 47 USB cards are missing. Stenstrom was informed that the cards he witnessed being uploaded were nowhere to be found. Of the roughly 50,000 votes on the cards in question, almost all were for Joe Biden.
“What was shocking to me as an American, as someone who has gone to sea, gone to war, that this could even happen,” he said.
After three days, Stenstrom secured a court order that allowed him to view the locked back offices. He and his group — which included a Democrat poll watcher who was a forensic pathologist — were allowed in the room for five minutes every two hours. Upon examination of the back office, Stenstrom identified 70,000 unopened mail-in ballots stacked in boxes of 500. Both Stenstrom and the Democrat poll watcher took extensive notes and verified that they had identified 60,000-70,000 mail-in ballots.
After three hours, the mail-in ballots were gone and cannot be located as of today. Up to 70,000 mail-in ballots cannot be located in Delaware County, PA, according to Stenstrom’s testimony.
On election day, Strenstrom was told that there were up to 120,000 mail-in ballots for the county with 6,000 yet to be counted. Upon finally gaining entry to the counting room, Stenstrom was told that the universe for mail-in ballots was actually upwards of 200,000.
Stenstrom then pleaded with law enforcement to obtain the forensic evidence from the computers. “It’s a simple process. You turn the computer off, it’s non-destructive, it takes maybe half an hour, 20 minutes to do it properly and collect the evidence. You open the computer up, you take a device called a bit blocker, you put it in the hard drive. It’s done under the observation of law enforcement officers, they take a forensic image of the drive, put it all back together, it wouldn’t have taken more than an hour to image all five machines. That was never done, despite my objections and that was three weeks ago.”
Two days before the hearing, Stenstrom was informed that “virtually all chain of custody logs, records, yellow sheets, everything,”, were gone.
“All forensic evidence, all custody sheets in Delaware County, are gone,” said Stenstrom. Poll workers were invited back in an attempt to recreate the lost logs, but this was unsuccessful. “So we have a situation where we have 100,000-120,000 ballots, both mail-in and USB, that are in question.”
“I don’t believe as a citizen and an observer to this, that anybody could certify that vote in any good conscience,” Stenstrom concluded.
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