The media are wrong: Republicans have good reason to be concerned about voter fraud. Electoral shenanigans, however, do not explain Biden’s lead over Trump.
“Progressives” and other lefties are feigning dismay at the fact that, as Politico reports, “70 percent of Republicans don’t think the [2020] election was free and fair.”
“Republicans have declared war on democracy itself,” exclaims Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman.
“Because the facts are not on Trump’s side, his campaign only has conspiracies and disinformation to make their argument,” insists CNN’s Oliver Darcy.
“This is what happens when lies and baseless allegations go unchecked,” writes communications consultant Brian Wagner.
Hypocrisy. This is rich coming from the same media and political partisans who, four short years ago, were eagerly sowing doubt about the legitimacy of Trump’s election. The president-elect then, we were told, won because of “Russian interference.”
American voters, we were told, were duped by the Russians; and Trump himself, it was not-so-subtly implied, was perhaps a Russian agent or willing accomplice.
It was only much later that we learned the much-vaunted “Steele Dossier,” upon which most of these allegations were based, was, in fact, a complete hoax “paid for by the Democrats to dig up dirt on Trump.”
As Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it:
Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately and cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.
Truth. Of course, consistency and fairness have never been the hallmarks of our political and media class. The operative question is: are Republican voters wrong to suspect that foul play and voter fraud affected the outcome of the election?
The truth is: yes and no. Multiple things can be true—and in this case are true—simultaneously:
- There is voter fraud: it is a real, if overstated, problem.
“Voter fraud exists—even though many in the media claim it doesn’t,” wrote John Fund and Hans A. von Spakovsky two years ago before the 2018 mid-term elections.
“Significant risks of potential abuse exist in many states’ election systems, as I detailed in a report in August,” wrote Cato Institute scholar Ilya Shapiro just days before Nov. 3, 2020, election.
A primary risk is ballot harvesting, which involves third parties collecting and delivering absentee ballots on voters’ behalf.
Newsweek reports: Ronna McDaniel, the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News commentator Sean Hannity “that she has 234 pages containing 500 sworn affidavits alleging 11,000 incidents of various types of voter fraud.”
“Contrary to the claims of many liberals,” explains the Heritage Foundation, “the problem of voter fraud is as old as the country itself.
As the U.S. Supreme Court noted when it upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, “flagrant examples” of voter fraud “have been documented throughout this nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.”
- Historically, Democratic political machines in big cities and large urban areas such as Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York have been cesspools of electoral corruption. This is a political and historical fact that Republicans have learned the hard way.
Indeed, as Jim Antle recounts in The Week:
Republican lore is full of stories about dead people voting and big Democratic political machines stealing elections since the days of Tammany Hall.
Fifty years before today’s fights over Pennsylvania, Michigan and beyond, [and] 40 years before Florida’s hanging chads, Richard Nixon was narrowly defeated by John F. Kennedy—thanks, many to this day maintain, to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and the Cook County Democrats’ malfeasance…
Republicans have at the rank-and-file level become the party of voter ID because to them it is axiomatic that if you let an election get too close, the big-city liberals will steal it.
- By all accounts, voter fraud does not appear to have affected the outcome of this election. Trump lost too many close states by too large a margin for fraud to have caused his loss.
“Most of the theories of election misconduct, even if proven, would not change the vote totals enough to overturn the outcome,” writes National Review’s Dan McLaughlin.
Trump, he notes, would have to flip three or four states where he is trailing Biden by tens of thousands of votes and for fairly explicable reasons that have nothing to do with voter fraud—e.g., Trump’s under-performance with suburban voters.
“There is no precedent for anything like this,” McLaughlin observes,
requiring a shift of over 47,000 votes to change the outcomes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin and send the election to the House, or over 74,000 to flip Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
The margin in Michigan alone is a daunting 146,137 votes, a far cry from the 537-vote margin in Florida in 2000.
- Trump and his toadies are exaggerating the extent to which voting fraud was a problem in the election.
“People will not accept this rigged election!” tweeted President Trump. “Watch for massive ballot-counting abuse,” he added.
“I don’t care what state you’re in, bellowed Lou Dobbs, “this computer voting system is wide open to fraud and intervention.”
Of course, it is one thing to acknowledge the reality of voter fraud. It is quite another thing altogether to insist that voter fraud was so widespread and rampant that it “rigged” the election.
There is simply no evidence to support this charge. The New York Times, for instance,
contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state on Monday and Tuesday to ask whether they suspected or had evidence of illegal voting.
Officials in 45 states, [both Democrats and Republicans], responded directly to the Times. For four of the remaining states, the Times spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state.
None reported any major voting issues [emphasis added].
- Nonetheless, all allegations of voter fraud should be thoroughly investigated and, if found to have merit, prosecuted under the law. This is important because it will help deter voter fraud in the future and help preserve the public’s faith in our democracy.
- To investigate and expose voter fraud is not to “attack democracy.” To the contrary: exposing corruption is the vital and necessary means by which we strengthen our democracy and restore the public’s faith in our political and electoral institutions.
- We have ample time to investigate and resolve allegations of voter fraud. States have yet to certify their election results; the Electoral College does not meet until Dec. 14; and the Presidential Inauguration is not until Jan. 20.
Thus the media to the contrary notwithstanding, there is absolutely no need now to declare Biden the president-elect or Trump the president-reelect.
Let the electoral and legal processes run their course. When these processes are completed, we will have a legitimately elected president.
Equally important, partisans on both sides will know that the election was conducted fairly; and that allegations of voter fraud were not ignored and swept under the rug.
To the contrary: such allegations, they will know, were taken seriously and addressed properly.
- In the meantime, Trump and his team should work cooperatively with Biden and his team to ensure a smooth transfer of power should Biden be declared the president-elect.
This means sharing critical national intelligence and providing access to information and officials, so that a Biden administration is ready and prepared Jan. 20.
Unfortunately, Trump’s team reportedly is refusing to work with Biden’s team until the election outcome is completely and officially resolved. That’s unacceptable, unhelpful, and unAmerican. We the people deserve better from our leaders.
The bottom line: voter fraud is a real problem that must be uncovered, exposed, and addressed; however, it simply does not explain Biden’s apparent victory in the 2020 presidential election.
And partisans on both sides do the nation a great disservice when they either pretend that voter fraud doesn’t exist or grossly exaggerate its electoral significance.
The good news is that we have the legal mechanisms in place to fairly address and adjudicate allegations of voter fraud and other electoral irregularities—and we have plenty of time to let the legal process work and run its course before either Trump or Biden are inaugurated Jan. 20, 2021.
Legitimacy. This is important because public faith in our political and electoral institutions depends on free and fair elections. And free and fair elections, of course, depend on holding officials accountable to the rule of law and prosecuting those who break the law.
The American people are watching, and they expect and deserve no less.
Feature photo credit: WKYT.