While speaking at a rally in Michigan on October 3, former US president Donald Trump insisted, as he has countless times since losing the 2020 election, "We won, we won. It was a rigged election.” And, just like every other time, Trump offered no evidence.A few days before that, Trump’s running mate, J D Vance, refused at the vice-presidential debate to say whether he thought Trump had lost, and then declined five opportunities to do so in an interview with the New York Times. Not long after, though, Vance fell in line, stating unequivocally that Trump did not lose in 2020. He, too, failed to provide any proof.Precipitating this latest cycle of denial was the release of a brief by special prosecutor Jack Smith that reveals damning evidence of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the weeks and months that followed. But whenever critics shine a spotlight on these misdeeds, Trump and his loyalists repeat their claims of fraud and omit the facts, and the US media and public move on to the next controversy.Trump offers no proof that he was cheated of victory in 2020 for the simple reason that he has none. In fact, there is ample evidence that there was no election fraud that year.In 2022, eight Republican lawyers and jurists, including Theodore Olson, the former US solicitor general who represented George W Bush in Bush v Gore in 2000, reviewed the 64 cases that Trump’s lawyers filed in state and federal courts alleging violations of election laws. Fourteen were withdrawn, while the state and lower federal courts dismissed 18 more. Of the 30 cases decided on the merits, Trump’s legal team prevailed in only one, on a minor matter. The US Supreme Court declined to hear two of Trump’s appeals."There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole,” the review concluded. "In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct.” Tellingly, at least four of the Trump campaign’s attorneys, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have been disbarred or sanctioned for knowingly presenting false claims in a court of law.In Georgia, the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, courageously refused Trump’s demand that he "find 11,780 votes” to reverse the outcome, even after a hand recount of the state’s presidential ballots confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. In five other battleground states – Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – legislative and executive officials conducted reviews and audits of the 2020 balloting, finding no proof of fraud or tampering. In Arizona, the state senate turned the Maricopa County ballots over to Cyber Ninjas, a firm recommended by the Trump campaign, for review. These "ninjas” likewise failed to show a stolen election, instead finding 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump.In the years since Biden assumed the presidency (notwithstanding Trump supporters’ violent attempt to derail the transition of power), private watchdogs and state and local prosecutors – many of them Republicans – have investigated allegations of voter fraud and found only a few cases of small-scale wrongdoing. In Arizona, only six people – of the nearly 3.4mn who voted in the 2020 election – were convicted of casting illegal ballots, two of whom submitted absentee ballots for relatives who had died before election day. In Pennsylvania, a man confessed to having applied for an absentee ballot on behalf of his deceased mother and casting "her” vote for Trump.The day after the 2020 presidential election, I explained why there was almost no chance of large-scale fraud changing the outcome of the race, not least because of the unrealistic level of planning, coordination, and secrecy it would require. In the nearly four years since then, Republican election officials and prosecutors have not unearthed any evidence of such fraud, even though doing so would make them heroes in Trumpworld.There is likewise no evidence – nor any prospect – that fraud will prevent Trump from prevailing in this year’s presidential election. Trump’s claims to the contrary are aimed at intimidating his opponents by threatening to prosecute them for activities both legal and necessary – because of his prior actions – to ensure a free and fair election.They may also be an attempt to suborn his supporters who hold positions in election administration into committing fraud, with the unspoken understanding that, like the wannabe insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, they will be protected and rewarded if he wins. On October 3, the same day that Trump repeated his fact-free allegation of electoral fraud, a Colorado judge sentenced the former county clerk of Mesa County to nine years in prison for giving an associate of the Trump ally Mike Lindell access to the county’s voting machines.Trump has revived his complaints of massive voter fraud for a simple reason: to obscure his own malfeasance after he lost the 2020 election, the extent of which is now coming to light. — Project Synidcatel John Mark Hansen, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, is a former coordinator of the research task force on the federal election system for the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, an independent, bipartisan commission which was co-chaired by former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
October 29, 2024 | 11:43 PM