LRI President Alexander Haberbush’s presentation on ensuring the integrity of the electoral process was removed by popular streaming website YouTube.com for allegedly spreading “misinformation.”
Alexander Haberbush, President of the Lex Rex Institute, recently spoke at the monthly meeting of the Orange County chapter of the California Republican Assembly. Mr. Haberbush, who had spoken before the group previously, appeared at the February 15 event by invitation. He had been asked to discuss his past work on election integrity and LRI’s plans to secure lawfully conducted elections in the future. Per LRI policy, the event was recorded on video and posted to the LRI channel on YouTube.com, with the title “How You Can Preserve Election Integrity.”
The video shows a question and answer session Mr. Haberbush conducted following a presentation on electoral fraud in general, and covers a variety of topics including how to ensure that elected officials are held accountable to their duty to ensure fair elections. Readers can see the ostensible “misrepresentations” for themselves, as the video has subsequently been uploaded to LRI’s sister account at Vimeo.com.
In his presentation, Mr. Haberbush did detail instances of election irregularities he observed while serving as a poll watcher (many instances of which have been admitted by the legislatures of the states in which they occurred), but Mr. Haberbush makes it clear that he is not accusing anyone of deliberate fraud: “Obviously, that’s not intentional fraud from anybody, but it is an irregularity.” Moreover, at no point in the video did Mr. Haberbush claim that the outcome of the election was altered by any of the irregularities - indeed, quite the opposite, as he was clear that nothing definite can be said at all, as an investigation has never been permitted. This, apparently, was not enough to keep YouTube from claiming the video violates its “misinformation policy.”
“The email our team received informing us of this determination tells us absolutely nothing,” said Mr. Haberbush. “We’ve not been given the slightest clue what I said that they’ve deemed to be untrue.”
A copy of the email notification LRI received from YouTube is linked for your reference.
“I didn’t say a word to suggest or imply that the election irregularities altered the results of the election. How could I? In most cases, state officials haven’t allowed an audit of the disputed ballots. We don’t know how those irregularities affected the election outcome, and that’s precisely the problem.”
Nevertheless, in explanation of its decision, YouTube states that “[c]ontent that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election is not allowed on YouTube.”
“What I said was that we haven’t been permitted to investigate those glitches and errors and that courts of competent jurisdiction have refused to hear the disputes on their merits. There’s obviously no way I could or would claim the election results were changed by these glitches and errors because no investigation has been allowed to proceed, showing one way or the other.”
“LRI is a scrupulously nonpartisan organization, and I do not voice political opinions in my presentations. LRI’s purpose is to see that the law is upheld, and that is the sole matter on which I spoke. It would be extremely irresponsible to indulge in idle speculation about the ‘true winner’ of the 2020 election, which is why I didn’t do that.”
“YouTube is not the arbiter of truth. What’s gone on here is very clearly targeted harassment of an organization that fails to fall into lockstep with YouTube’s corporate position on these issues. They apparently believe that justifies flinging blatant factual inaccuracies at us, so long as it advances that position. We are not the first organization similarly targeted, and it will not stand.”
The Lex Rex Institute is currently exploring legal options to hold YouTube accountable.
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