After further review...there is still no fraud
On January 6th Congress will meet to formally count the electoral votes. With a number of Republican members of Congress now saying they will object to the electoral count, it’s time to revisit the issue of fraud in the 2020 election. There is still no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election and there are no good reasons to continue to act as if the election was stolen...here’s my case.
#1-Since the first post about this on December 14th, Trump and allies have continued to lose cases in court and have not even really alleged voter fraud. The most recent example is Rep. Gohmert’s lawsuit against V.P. Pence argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional. A Trump appointed judge in Texas dismissed the case due to a lack of proper standing by Gohmert. Similar to other cases, Gohmert’s lawsuit does not even allege fraud but seeks an alternative method to overturn the election results. In case after case, Trump’s lawyers or those sympathetic to him have not convinced courts that widespread electoral fraud occurred.
#2-Voting software companies Dominion and Smartmatic have threatened defamation lawsuits, prompting withdrawal of allegations on some news networks. Smartmatic threatened to sue Fox News for repeated allegations that the Smartmatic software was used to rig the election. In response the network began running their own fact checks explaining that there is no evidence of vote tampering. One of the main issues with the allegations was that Smartmatic wasn’t even used in the contested states. Dominion has also threatened lawsuits against Fox, as well as Newsmax and OAN, prompting Newsmax to also walk back their claims of voter fraud. Dominion has also threatened legal action against Melissa Carone, who was Guliani’s star witness alleging voter fraud in Detroit. The trend is consistent. Whenever the claims of fraud run against real tests of evidence, whether that be trying to prove it in a court of law or threatened with legal action for lying, the claims are either not presented or retracted.
#3-Recounts and audits in key states have not presented any evidence of widespread fraud. Georgia has conducted multiple recounts have not found evidence of fraud large enough to overturn the election. Georgia also recently completed an audit of a statistically significant number of absentee ballots (15,000) and found no fraudulent ballots. Wisconsin’s recount also did not change the results of the election in that state. The allegations of fraud suggest that they happened in multiple states in a similar fashion, that the voting software changed votes and the absentee ballots were fraudulent. However, there is simply no evidence that either of these are true.
#4-If there is no evidence for widespread voter fraud the question becomes why are Republican leaders still acting as if there is evidence. There seem to be only two possibilities.
1-The first is that people actually believe there still is and that it is a vast conspiracy theory. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, two lawyers who have been at the forefront of the fraud allegations, fall into this category. Lin Wood took it a step further over the holiday week suggesting that conspiracy involved Democrats, the Chinese Communist Party, CIA, Soros, Gates, Republicans, VP Pence, Sen. McConnell and Chief Justice Roberts. Wood also accused Roberts of adopting two kids from Wales with the help of Jeffrey Epstein (who he thinks is still alive) so he could use the kids as admission into some secret cabal and that Roberts apparently was in on murdering Justice Scalia. I know I wrote about “nutpicking” a few weeks ago but Lin Wood is not some random person in the comments section. He has 998,000 plus followers on Twitter, has filed multiple lawsuits alleging fraud in the 2020 election, and has consistently been retweeted by President Trump. He represents the category of true believers of electoral fraud well.
2-The second category of those still alleging voter fraud are mostly elected Republican officials, who are doing it either to raise money or because they think it will help them win an election, even though they know there is no merit to the allegations. Senator Ben Sasse summarized this well in his statement about Senator Josh Hawley’s plan to contest the electoral count. He rightly calls out Hawley for cynically using this moment to position himself for the Republican primary in 2024. Not to be outdone, Senator Ted Cruz, who also will likely run in 2024, has announced that he will object on January 6th as well, along with 10 other Republican Senators. Cruz, Hawley and other Republican members of Congress know the election is valid, they know that Biden will become President on January 20th and so know they are protected to pursue political gain in an irresponsible fashion. It reminds me of a time when I worked at the Indiana State Senate and one of the State Senators voted for a bill to put seatbelts on school buses even though he was against it. He knew it would fail and he had a company in his district that made seat belts, so a win-win from his perspective. He was protected from the consequences of his vote and could still act like he supported something one of his campaign contributors supported. This is what is happening with Republicans in Congress. They are cynically manipulating millions of Americans for political gain and/or monetary gain. Right after Hawley announced he’d object on January 6th his office sent out fundraising emails. Politics has always been a cynical business but rarely has it been so obvious and had such dire consequences.
#5-Unfortunately it seems that President Trump is a good example of both of these categories. Trump has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since the election. He has also consistently given publicity to some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories. As an example, he recently tweeted about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s brother Ron working for a Chinese company. The only problem is that Raffensperger does not have a brother named Ron. Trump followed this up with a truly outlandish and dangerous call to Raffensperger. Throughout the call Trump continues to make baseless accusations, openly talks about rumors as if they were fact and pleads with Raffensperger to just “find” the 14,780 votes he needs to win in Georgia. Trump offers rumors while Raffensperger and his lawyer offer actual data and evidence. As mentioned above, Georgia has done three recounts and an absentee ballot audit and the state election officials are satisfied they have an accurate count. If you read or listen to the whole thing it provides a clear picture of how truly cynical and/or delusional the President is at the moment.
Based on the evidence there is still no doubt that Biden’s win was valid and the election occurred without widespread fraud. The continued campaign by Republican leaders who know better only serves to further radicalize the group of true believers who continue to get more extreme in their rhetoric. The elected leaders act as if there was fraud and that something can be done about, knowing full well that Biden will rightfully be the next President of the U.S. In doing so, they set up expectations for millions of Americans that will be bitterly disappointed, blame the institutions of the country and could quite possibly resort to violence when they don’t get what they want. It’s a dangerous game being played by folks like Hawley and Cruz and something that should be remembered in 2024 when they run for President and act as if they did nothing during this time. Actively attempting to subvert an election you know was valid is not something you want on the resume of a president. Trump’s actions after the election should also surely eliminate him from consideration for the presidency in 2024.
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This is one of the more effective campaign ads ever. It combines an attack on the opponent along with something positive about the candidate. Not a good ad for HW Bush but provides some insight into why Clinton won.