One of the most pervasive lies that has characterized the Trump administration and its MAGA followers has been the statement that the 2020 election was “stolen.”
This lie has metastasized into various forms and functions now as a basic litmus test for whether you can get a job in our federal government. It seems to be one of those foundational beliefs that cannot be challenged if you want to remain in good standing within the MAGA wing of the GOP.
It has also become the standard explanation whenever a Republican candidate does not win any election, even in a largely Democratic state such as California, where the GOP candidate would typically be unlikely to win against Democratic candidates. Yet Trump and MAGA cried foul.
House Majority Leader Mike Johnson, for instance, when asked about the lack of any evidence that the California primary elections were “rigged” said, “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.”
In other words, an election must be rigged if the Republican candidate doesn’t win, but the elections are magically free of rigging if the GOP candidate does happen to win. In the California primaries, Republican candidate Steve Hilton advanced in the governor’s race while Spencer Pratt, also a Republican, failed to advance in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. Both outcomes were produced by exactly the same election procedures and ballots. Was just half the election rigged?
Logic is not a favorite tool in the GOP playbook. Wouldn’t it be logical, if someone made the dramatic claim that an election was rigged, to simply ask how they can prove what they are saying? In a criminal case, guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, liability must be established by a preponderance of the evidence. But in election fraud claims, many advocates seem to believe no evidence at all is required except that their candidate lost.
Now, those of you who aren’t sure whether our elections are fair and secure, here are some facts for you to chew on:
• Virtually every lawsuit that challenged the results of the 2020 Presidential election did not prevail in court. Judges appointed by many different Presidents, including Trump himself, ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove widespread voter fraud.
• Many recounts were conducted. None of the findings changed more than a small number of vote totals, and the changes were due to human error, not fraud. Even Cyber Ninjas, a private review firm hired by Arizona senators hoping to uncover evidence of massive fraud, found no significant differences from the original count, and in fact increased Biden’s winning margin slightly.
• Undocumented immigrants are extremely unlikely to even attempt to vote, since it is already illegal for them to do so. Documented cases are exceedingly rare. We don’t need to post ICE agents or police at voting sites to intimidate American citizens who are simply exercising their constitutional right to vote, but who may not look the way “Americans” are supposed to look.
• Why would the Trump administration be trying to make it harder for citizens to vote? In a democracy, wouldn’t we want every eligible voter to cast a ballot? If fraud has not been proven, why would the government want to eliminate mail-in voting, polling places on college campuses, and early voting? Could the goal be to create so much distrust among voters that they stay home from the polls? Or so much inconvenience, and even fear for many citizens? Trump has equated broader access to the ability to vote with Democratic strategies to win elections, but when you think about it, doesn’t that mean he thinks more people will vote Democratic? That’s not really a strategy, it’s more of a core principle of democracy: the people get to pick their representatives. If you listen to people who claim our elections are rigged, they sometimes stumble over the fact that logic, much less evidence, does not support that claim, since the “rigged” election of 2020 was followed by the “unrigged” election of 2024, which Trump won by the slimmest of margins (1.47%) despite claiming a landslide. In other words, why didn’t the folks who rigged the 2020 election rig the 2024 election as well?
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