We know Donald Trump is going to continue spouting his delusions about the results of the 2020 presidential election because those lies appear to be foundational to his 2024 campaign. It’s more distressing that his followers continue to believe that which has been proven as untrue over and over again.
Now Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, has started her tenure as co-chair of the Republican National Committee with a recorded message yammering on about the “stolen 2020 election” and replete with lies about various frauds including felons, illegal immigrants, and dead people voting; voting machines that switch votes during tabulation; and the always popular folks illegally casting multiple ballots. All of which proves, according to the Trump clan, that Donald Trump easily won the 2020 presidential election that was stolen from him. Here’s a bulletin—no he didn’t and no it wasn’t. If they keep lying, others must keep telling the truth.
In fact, the 2020 presidential election in the most contested states was scrutinized, recounted, audited, and reviewed by multiple sources multiple times.
Maricopa County’s 2020 general election ballots were recounted, audited, recounted, audited, and recounted again. In the end, no widespread fraud was found, and even the Trump-sponsored group’s efforts found nothing suspicious…but did discover an additional 99 votes for Biden.
Nowhere have examples of widespread voter fraud significant enough to alter major elections been shown to exist. But somehow that myth, now really just a destructive lie, has turned into anger toward election officials deemed responsible for problems that did not and do not exist. The Bipartisan Policy Center surveyed 18,000 election officials from all 50 states and found harassment and threats a leading cause of a 39 percent turnover rate. Even worse, 70 percent of election officials in cities of more than 100,000 faced harassment or received threats.
Since it’s mostly our friends and neighbors who oversee our elections—and take that responsibility seriously—suggesting widespread election fraud is to accuse those neighbors of being liars, cheats, and co-conspirators in felonies depriving you of your voting franchise. Believing such a conspiracy, that would have had to involve thousands of Republicans and Democrats in multiple states across the country, is utter nonsense. Believing it of local election officials is just rude.
The ongoing false assertions of election fraud are the real fraud.