Research Shows That No Substantial Voter Fraud Was Found To Overthrow The 2020 Election, Despite Constant Claims From Trump and Republicans
Amid the hubbub over the Colorado Supreme Court decision that could block Donald Trump from that state’s ballot, another story about the effects of the Big Lie of election fraud seems to have passed by without a lot of notice.
In service to fact-finding, The Washington Post uniquely set out to find what six Republican states bent on finding widespread voter fraud actually found since the 2020 election.
What journalists learned was that election integrity units established or expanded in six states got only 47 convictions during a period in which tens of millions of votes were cast, and the units overwhelmingly targeted minorities and Democrats for prosecution.
As it turns out, these state election units generally limited their searches for fraud in precincts with higher percentage populations of Black, Latino and Democratic voters.
“The analysis also showed that election integrity units have not uncovered the type of wide-ranging schemes claimed by Trump and some Republican allies that might tilt an election,” The Post said. “Instead, the vast majority of the convictions represent small-bore cheating — or, as some defendants argue, mistakes — by individual voters, such as casting two ballots, falsifying a registration or voting even if barred by a conviction.”
So much for the Big Lie underscoring what has now turned into years of whining about how Democrats stole the election from Trump.
Allegations of widespread voting fraud have been the excuse for proposals to seize voting machines, for defaming election workers and companies that make voting machines, for the violence of Jan. 6, 2021 and for the continuing deep abyss in our partisan politics.
Fraud as a Campaign Mainstay
The allegations are routinely cited by Republicans up and down the political chain and are the main stump speech element for Trump himself. It is why Trump offers himself as a “retribution” candidate, and arises routinely to explain what Republicans see as excesses in FBI and justice investigations —and prosecutions arising from the various schemes and plots devised around that Big Lie.
But what if none of it is true?
There always are a few people who try to vote more than once or who try to vote with outdated registration. The question here has been the scale of any such fraud, and whether any of it would sway an election.
There were 115 cases that have been resolved with 42 ending in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges — nearly the same as the number of guilty verdicts in Florida, Texas and Ohio. Election integrity groups units in Virginia, Georgia and Arkansas failed to obtain a single guilty verdict, despite allocating dozens of staffers and millions of dollars to ferret out voter fraud, said The Post.
Determining those numbers required compiling a database representing the prosecutions in six states, working to match voting records with other records listing race or party registration. So the quality of data varied, but overall the data showed little bang for the buck.
Republicans have argued that these election units would help give voters confidence in election results, professionalize fraud investigations and put cheats on notice. They also said the units have done work beyond prosecuting voter fraud to ensure free and fair elections, such as combating a text message campaign in Virginia that was spreading misinformation to voters, said The Post.
Hey, congratulations may be in order. Three years and no substantial fraud.
Those Republicans were right: I feel more confident about elections.