What independent experts have said about ETA's North Carolina and Pennsylvania analyses?
Executive summary
Independent election-forensics expert Dr. Walter Mebane, Jr. has publicly reported statistical anomalies in Pennsylvania that he characterizes as potentially decisive and that corroborate findings by the Election Truth Alliance (ETA) in that state [1]. ETA’s own reporting asserts widespread anomalous patterns in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and is pressing for hand-count audits and litigation, but the available reporting names Mebane as the principal independent expert support for Pennsylvania while not presenting a similarly identified independent expert endorsement of ETA’s North Carolina claims [2] [3] [1].
1. ETA’s claims: broad anomalies and calls for hand audits
The Election Truth Alliance reported that its analysis of publicly available data found “patterns consistent with vote manipulation” across multiple vote types in North Carolina and in three Pennsylvania counties, and the group has publicly called for full hand audits of paper voting records in North Carolina and sought court-ordered audits in Pennsylvania [2] [3] [4]. ETA’s materials assert that in North Carolina early voting and Election Day ballots comprised 92.4% of votes and that a large share of machines lacked full certification testing, framing these factual points as context for their anomaly findings [2] [3]. ETA also filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania’s Western District seeking hand counts and named specific county boards and the state secretary as defendants in those filings [4].
2. Independent expert corroboration in Pennsylvania: Dr. Walter Mebane’s analysis
Dr. Walter Mebane, a widely cited academic in election forensics, produced a working report applying his “eforensics” model to the 2024 Pennsylvania results and stated that his analysis corroborates ETA’s findings and that it is possible the election “was decided or nearly decided by malevolent distortions of electors’ intentions,” language he used in describing the Pennsylvania results [1]. Mebane’s eforensics examination covered 7,040,360 votes across 67 Pennsylvania counties and produced an estimated range of between about 25,000 and 225,440 votes that his models flagged as possibly fraudulent, with the wide interval reflecting the use of several forensic model variants [1]. ETA and its releases cite Mebane’s work as independent corroboration for their Pennsylvania concerns and note that anomalies in Pennsylvania could exceed the reported presidential margin in the state [4] [1].
3. The North Carolina gap: no named independent expert in provided reporting
While ETA’s North Carolina report is cited repeatedly in its own statements and press releases asserting more extensive patterns than in prior ETA analyses of other states, the provided materials do not include a named independent technical expert equivalent to Mebane explicitly endorsing ETA’s North Carolina analysis [2] [3]. ETA’s public materials stress that their methodologies are “grounded in the work of election forensics experts,” but the reporting at hand does not document an outside expert review, independent replication, or peer-reviewed publication validating the North Carolina results beyond ETA’s internal presentation [3]. That absence in the provided reporting means independent expert agreement on North Carolina’s anomalies cannot be confirmed from these sources alone.
4. Context, scope and the parties’ incentives
ETA describes itself as a non‑partisan, volunteer-led nonprofit conducting independent data analysis and has pursued both publicity and litigation based on its findings, which suggests an organizational incentive to publicize results that prompt hand audits and legal remedies [4] [3]. The reporting identifies Mebane as an external expert whose methods and stature lend weight to the Pennsylvania analysis, but the materials are press-release driven and do not present counter-analysis from state election officials, neutral auditing bodies, or additional independent statisticians in the sourced documents [4] [1]. Because the available documents are primarily ETA press statements and PR Newswire distributions, readers should note the possibility of selection and emphasis consistent with advocacy and litigation strategies rather than an independent neutral audit record [2] [3].
5. What this means going forward
Based on the supplied reporting, independent expert endorsement exists clearly for the Pennsylvania findings in the form of Dr. Mebane’s working report, which quantifies a range of suspect votes and states the possibility of decisive malevolent distortions; by contrast, the North Carolina claims rest in the supplied sources on ETA’s own analyses and calls for hand audits without a named external expert validation in those same materials [1] [2] [3]. The next decisive steps—neutral audits, publication of underlying data and methods for replication, or formal state-level hand recounts—are not documented in the provided reporting, leaving open whether independent forensic consensus will form around ETA’s North Carolina assertions [3] [2].