voter fraud (mainly about the 2020 election)

TL;DR The election’s integrity was ensured by the election officials and governors who certified the votes in all 50 states & the judges who dismissed various court cases claiming fraud due to lack of evidence, as well as the Supreme Court. Interestingly, it is Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's pick for Vice President in 2012, who offers a great perspective on this issue, saying "The legal process was exhausted, and the results were decisively confirmed. The Department of Justice, too, found no basis for overturning the result. If states wish to reform their processes for future elections, that is their prerogative. But Joe Biden’s victory is entirely legitimate." He also said Trump had a "lack of evidence" regarding widespread fraud and called the plan to challenge Biden's win "anti-democratic" and "anti-conservative," with these comments being reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal and The Cap Times, among other places. The full statement can be viewed here.

In an effort to try and delay conceding the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Donald Trump has pushed this idea that there was widespread voter fraud leading to Biden's victory. Trump claims he is actually the winner to his supporters, who lap it up as they continue their ongoing battle against reality. Unsurprisingly, this is not the case. Also, when dealing with random claims random people make that are pointed out as "evidence" of voter fraud or the election being "stolen" notice how they only make these claims on TV or on the internet and not in court where there are consequences for lying under oath. Also notice how MAGA idiots claim the media and now the courts don't decide who the president is - "we the people do" - despite the fact that Trump and his allies are trying to use the courts to decide who the president is. If it's people who decide who the president is then why is Trump using the courts? Hmmm.... curious. Trump's dumbass even called the secretary of state in Georgia demanding they "find" him 11,000+ votes. And even though many of these idiots are calling for martial law, war, some form of a coup, even Trump's attorney Jenna Ellis says she opposes this and the use of the Insurrection Act, as reported by The Epoch Times and Just the News.

EPIC UPDATE: After all electors voted on Monday, December 14th, 2020, Joe Biden was formalized as the president-elect with 306 electoral college votes. Biden has officially won, Trump lost. News outlets like CBS News, the Associated Press, NPR, FOX News, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Business Standard, and more have reported on this.

WEIRD UPDATE: In a strange turn of events, some members of the GOP tried to sue Mike Pence to give him the power to overturn the election. This lawsuit was not only tossed out by a judge but Pence himself asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Yahoo News, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Dallas Morning News, and FOX News have also reported on this, among others.

ANOTHER EPIC UPDATE: Trump posted a video to his Twitter account in which he states that "a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th" and that his focus is to ensure a "smooth, orderly, and seamless" transition of power. Trump's Twitter has since been suspended but the video can still be viewed on YouTube. Kayleigh McEnany also expressed similar beliefs.

NEWSMAX THING: Newsmax anchor says that Newsmax has accepted the results of the 2020 Presidential election as "legal and final" and that Newsmax not been able to verify any kind of allegations regarding Dominion voting machines and there is nothing substantive they've seen.

Supreme Court rulings

On December 11th, 2020 the Supreme Court rejected a case from the state of Texas which Trump backed that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, specifically the results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump called this case "the big one" in a Tweet. The court wrote "The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot." The Texas Tribune writes that "With Electoral College deadlines rapidly approaching, the ruling likely ends President Donald Trump's bid to overturn the election results through the courts." Fox News, CNBC, NBC News, the New York Times, NPR, and Politico have also reported on this. Apparently, the decision was unanimous.

On December 8th, 2020 the Supreme Court, which has three Trump appointees, has rejected a bid by a Republican member of Congress and other GOP activists to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania. NPR, CBS News, and the New York Times have also reported on this.

On March 8th, 2021 the Supreme court, which again I will remind you has three Trump appointees, denied a bid by Trump to nullify his loss in Wisconsin. This is thought to be the final bid to try and nullify the results. Fox News also reported on this.

General info regarding Trump's lawsuits and lack of evidence

The Heritage Foundation database shows no "Altering The Vote Count" fraud in all of 2020.

Attorney General Bill Barr told the Associated Press that "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election," on December 1st, 2020. Media Ite also reported on this story. Later, at his final press conference as attorney general, he said that he sees no reason to appoint a special counsel to potential election fraud or Hunter Biden nonsense, as reported by the Associated Press.

Trump is such a little crybaby about the lack of evidence that exists for his claims of widespread voter fraud that he potentially may fire a top cybersecurity election official who disputed his claims. Politicus USA reports that Chris Krebs, the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will be fired by the president. Krebs initially told Reuters he expected to be fired following his debunking of Trump's claims of voter fraud. Krebs was officially fired on November 17th. Funnily enough, it was Trump that appointed Krebs, but MAGA idiots still think this firing is apart of the "drain the swamp" ridiculousness despite the fact that Trump appointed Krebs (more sources which confirm Trump appointed Krebs: Threat Post, Extra Crunch, Krebs On Security, Technology Review, NBC News). Politico reports that the "Rumor Control" website Krebs oversees had been debunking Trump's claims of voter fraud and fact checking the president's baseless and erroneous statements. The website even debunks the idiotic "Trump was winning then I went to bed and Biden was winning when I woke up so that is voter fraud" argument, stating "Election results reporting may occur more slowly than prior years. This does not indicate there is any problem with the counting process or results. Official results are not certified until all validly cast ballots have been counted, including ballots that are counted after election night."

A joint statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and Sector Coordinating Council Executive Committees, comprised of people from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), and other civic and voter organizations, identifies that the November 3rd, 2020 election was the most secure in history and that "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Additionally, it states that "While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

In a New York Times in a piece titled "The Times Called Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud," the Times contacted the offices of election officials across the country in search of instances of voter fraud, but officials said that there weren't any irregularities that affected the outcome. Right off the bat, the article makes this clear: "Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election." The only problems some states reported to the Times were problems that occurred in every kind of election - some double voting, some technical errors, and glitches - but nothing that rose to the level of widespread fraud Trump has been talking about.

Funnily enough, most of the Trump campaign's searches for evidence of voter fraud have turned up lies and spam. Law and Crime reports that one of Trump's attorneys said in court that "he tried to enter hundreds of dodgy form-filed affidavits into evidence, even though their own investigation found that a subset of the sworn statements that they received were filled with lies and 'spam.'" The judge questioned how that evidence gathering was at all reliable and blocked the admission of the "evidence."

Even Tucker Carlson admits that Trump's lawyers, particularly Sidney Powell, have shown no evidence of any of this fraud in a monologue on his show. Part of the monologue is below:

"So we invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour. We would have given her the entire week, actually, and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention.

"But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of polite requests. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they also told us Powell had never given them any evidence to prove anything she claimed today at the press conference.

"Powell did say that electronic voting is dangerous, and she’s right, but she never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one."

The video can be watched here with this particular part of the monologue starting at 9:18.

States look into voter fraud themselves

An audit of the election results in Maricopa County in Arizona commissioned by Republican Karen Fann found actually strengthened Biden's victory. The audit resulted in 360 more votes for Biden and 261 fewer for Trump. Fann was quoted as saying, "by the AZ Mirror but also appeared in AZ Family along with various other news sites.

The Texas attorney general's office looked into claims of voter fraud in the state in the 2020 presidential election and found just 16 cases of false addresses on registration forms after 22,000 hours of looking. There are 17 million registered voters in Texas so it seems voter fraud is about a one in a million chance. NBC News and the Houston Chronicle reported on this.

Lawsuits from the Trump team regarding voter fraud have been dismissed in these states:

• Michigan - A judge dismissed a Trump team lawsuit to stop the counting of absentee ballots, calling it "hearsay."

• Michigan - A judge dismissed a Trump team lawsuit to halt election results in Detroit, calling it "mere speculation."

• Michigan - As of November 19th, 2020 the Trump team has won one of its election fraud related lawsuits and lost 28. The one lawsuit the team won? - letting observers be able to stand a little closer to ballot counters. The full complaint and dismissal can be read here.

• Georgia - A judge dismissed a Trump team lawsuit to disqualify 53 ballots that allegedly were late, finding no evidence to support the claims.

  • Update to the Georgia situation - As of, November 18th the Georgia election results were certified by the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican: Joe Biden won the state and its 16 electoral votes. The audit conducted by the state "reaffirmed the outcome of the presidential race in Georgia as originally reported, with Joe Biden leading President Donald Trump in the state." On November 20th the state's website officially certified the results with Biden winning 49.51% of the vote and Trump winning 49.25%. According to Georgia, Biden won Georgia.

  • Another update - As of December 7th, and after three recounts in the state which each produced the same result - a Biden victory - Joe Biden is officially the winner of Georgia, for the third time. This was announced by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump has now lost the state of Georgia three times. Republican Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan even says it's time for Trump to move on.

• Arizona - A judge rejected the Trump team's request for evidence to be sealed in a lawsuit over Maricopa County votes (Trump's team alleges poll workers "incorrectly rejected" votes) because the public has a right to know how flimsy the Trump team evidence is.

• Wisconsin - Joe Biden actually gained votes in the state following a Trump ordered recount. The Trump campaign paid $3 million dollars to find 257 extra votes for Biden and 125 votes for Trump. They paid money to have Biden go ahead by an additional 132 votes.

• Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a Trump team lawsuit over observers in Philadelphia. In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled that "law requires only that observers must be allowed 'in the room' where ballots are counted but does not set a minimum distance between them and the counting tables." A judge said that it would be "misguided" to presumptively valid ballots should be thrown out based on a procedural irregularity (observers standing at a certain distance), something the Trump team seemed to be arguing. Another judge echoed this sentiment, saying "no court would be likely to invalidate ballots 'solely because of a procedural flaw concerning observational rights.'"

• Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a Trump team request that 2.5 million mail in ballots be thrown out. The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on this.

• Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump led lawsuit which objected that Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. All three Republican judges were in agreement on this ruling and were led by Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by Trump.

  • NPR reported on this as well.

  • From the disposition: "Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections. The ballots here are governed by Pennsylvania election law. No federal law requires poll watchers or specifies where they must live or how close they may stand when votes are counted. Nor does federal law govern whether to count ballots with minor state-law defects or let voters cure those defects. Those are all issues of state law, not ones that we can hear. And earlier lawsuits have rejected those claims."

• Nevada - The Nevada Supreme Court has dismissed a Trump team lawsuit to overturn the state's election results, citing little to no factual evidence presented to the court or found by the court.

Why it could seem like voter fraud

This election was conducted during a pandemic - the COVID19 pandemic - making many Americans prefer to mail in their ballots rather than physically show up to polls. Considering Trump decried mail in voting and more left leaning people believed that the pandemic was a real thing that required precautions and risk-mitigation measures (more Democrats than Republicans said the pandemic changed the way they live their lives in a major way, per the PEW Research Center), mail in votes were more likely to be for the Democratic candidate Joe Biden rather than Trump. The Election Project shows there were almost double the amount of mail in ballots requested by those registered as Democrats than those registered as Republican in the 19 states that have party registration data and data from the PEW Research Center shows that people who supported Biden, or were leaning towards Biden, were far more likely to vote by mail or absentee ballot, as seen below in Figure 5 and 6. Additionally, on the day before the election The Hill reported that "Overall, Democrats have outperformed Republicans in early voting, after President Trump spent months waging baseless attacks on mail-in ballots." Even before the pandemic, there were always more mail in ballots cast for the Democratic candidate than the Republican candidate (Figure 7 below). Additionally, absentee ballots aren't just sparingly used: absentee ballots consisted of almost 25% of all votes cast in the 2016 election (23.7% to be exact). Thus, there was a flood of early mail in votes and this, coupled with the fact that more Americans voted in this election than any other in history, meant there were concerns about how long it will take mail and election systems in key states to process and tally all the ballots being sent in. Election officials in many states have never had to process so many mail ballots, so reporting delays and inconsistencies in reporting are understandable. Individual state policies regarding absentee and mail in votes can be found here.

Let's take a look at some states constantly pointed to as being ripe with evidence of fraud due to the late "surge" of votes for Biden. Pennsylvania counts mail in and absentee ballots up to three days after election day if postmarked by election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislature, a government entity. Local news station NBC Philadelphia reports that Republican lawmakers in the state "appeared unwilling" to "authorize counties to process mail-in ballots before Election Day, seen as crucial to producing a prompt election result." The Courier Newsroom also reports that Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania refused to allow mail in ballots to be processed ahead of time and the Keystone Newsroom has stated that "While Gov. Tom Wolf and other Democrats tried to change the law to allow counties to begin processing ballots sooner, the Republican-led legislature has refused to cooperate." Slate and the Philadelphia Inquirer also report similar information regarding Republicans being the reason why vote counting is taking so long. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette also identifies that far more Democrats voted by mail and far more Republicans voted in person. Furthermore, the Philadelphia Enquirer reports that negotiations "between the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to let counties begin opening mail ballots in Pennsylvania before Election Day appeared to collapse Wednesday, setting up a potential nightmare scenario that some fear could leave the state counting millions of ballots for days after Nov. 3," and without a deal struck between these two parties "the days-long process of counting mail ballots can’t begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day, potentially leaving the results unclear for days and opening room for candidates to falsely declare victory." So it was a failure on the part of the GOP in Pennsylvania to allow mail in votes and absentee ballots to be counted early, leading to them being counted late and after election day which many idiots think is evidence of voter fraud. Same story in Michigan, according to the Associated Press only cities or townships with at least 25,000 people could begin processing mail in and absentee ballots early. "Processing" here means opening the ballots and then placing them in secret envelopes so even with this new law all mail in and absentee ballots cannot be counted until 7 a.m. on election day in Michigan. Additionally, the Detroit Free Press reports that some of Michigan's 51 largest cities would not be processing ballots early, and with these cities not getting a head start potential results were expected to be delayed. M Live Michigan, Bridge Michigan, local news station WXYZ Detroit, The Detroit News, and Politico, have also published articles regarding the mail in and absentee ballot counts in Michigan with similar information and the Michigan Secretary of State even wrote that because of "the significant increase in voters casting absentee ballots, it could take until Friday, Nov. 6, for all ballots to be counted," on October 29th. Republicans are also responsible for mail in and absentee ballots not being counted early, thus making it seem like Biden was getting votes after the buzzer had sounded, as Bridge Michigan reports that Republicans control the state legislature and were reluctant to change laws on how absentee ballots were counted. Same story in Wisconsin as well, where the Republican state legislature "refused requests to allow ballots to be counted early, despite explicitly being told by election officials that taking that approach would delay election results," according to Law & Crime. This article also identifies the similar situations in Pennsylvania and Michigan: "The primary reason for the delays in reporting election results in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin can be traced directly back to their Republican-led legislatures, each of which enacted laws barring election officials from counting mail-in ballots that had been coming in for weeks." In September, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel even identified that the state would probably not have election results certified on election night.

Why do absentee ballots take longer to count? Wisconsin Public Radio explains that

"Absentee ballots take longer to process than ballots cast in person on Election Day. That’s because absentee ballot envelopes need to be checked against poll books and checked for voter signature, voter address and witness signature requirements before they’re opened. After they’re unsealed, ballots must be smoothed out before they’re fed into tabulating machines. If any ballots are damaged or the machine won’t accept them because they’re too rumpled or creased, the ballot will need to be re-created by poll workers in a time-consuming process dictated by state law."

Perhaps the reason why it looked like Biden was just receiving votes en masse after election day was because states were taking longer than usual to count the massive number of mail in and absentee ballots, which were disproportionately votes for Biden when they could have begun this count prior to election day and had results sooner, but early counting was blocked or not agreed to by Republicans. Furthermore, because urban areas can tend to favor the Democratic candidate it can appear that blue votes are being cast after the deadline but that isn't the case, as The Guardian identifies.

Maybe Trump committed voter fraud?

It's very suspicious how Trump gained a sharp lead right at the beginning of the count, almost like somebody had pre-loaded millions of fake ballots into the counting machines.

There have been some examples of MAGA idiots committing election fraud in 2020 as well.

Link - QANON idiot does voter fraud, tries to deliver truck with fake votes.

Link - Trump voter in Pennsylvania charged with voter fraud. The Hill also reported on this, as well as Forbes. His name is Bruce Bartman and apparently he "used the driver’s license of his dead mother, Elizabeth Bartman, to register her to vote online, and then requested and filled out an absentee ballot in her name," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. A press release from the district attorney can be read here.

Trump urged supporters to go vote in person, even after voting by mail, essentially telling them to vote twice. "So, send it [the ballot] in early, and then go and vote," he said to supporters in North Carolina. This would be a felony in NC, as is indicting someone to vote twice like Trump did here. This is stated in N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §163-275.

Specific case debunks

Dominion and other voting machines: these claims that Dominion voting machines and others were programmed or something to turn Trump votes to votes for Biden are just really dumb. Sure, technology can mess up from time to time but not like this. Even the MAGA idiot safe haven Newsmax said that they have found "no evidence that either Dominion or Smartmatic owns the other or has any business association with each other. We have no evidence that Dominion uses Smartmatic software or vise versa. No evidence has been offered that either Dominion or Smartmatic use software or reprogram software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election."

One of the most popular bits of "evidence" that Trump supporters will use to support this false claim is a statistic that shows Biden gaining 128,000 votes seemingly out of nowhere in Michigan while Trump gained zero. This has been debunked, those 128k votes were identified as a clerical error by Decision Desk HQ (Figure 1). They identified the error and "cleared the erroneous data and updated it with the correct data as provided by officials." Even the conservative chairman of the TravisGOP in Texas Matt Mackowiak, who had tweeted the erroneous data, deleted the tweet with the incorrect data and made a post identifying the data he shared was inaccurate (Figure 2). The Detroit Free Press also published an article regarding the error, aptly titled "No, Joe Biden did not magically 'find' votes in Michigan," and identified that "An hour-by-hour update from Associated Press data shows that there was no point in time when Trump did not post an increase in votes." Furthermore, they provide a graph with the actual hour-by-hour totals from the Associated Press (Figure 3). Biden would go on to win Michigan by "about 150,000 more votes than the president in the state," according to the Detroit Free Press, meaning that even if those 128k votes were subtracted from his final total he still would have won the state by ~22,000 votes. CBS also identifies that Biden won the state by ~150,00 votes (147,897 to be exact) and local news station Fox 2 Detroit identifies Biden won by ~150,000 (146,123 to be exact).

Another popular bit of "evidence" of voter fraud peddled by Trump supporters is the boarding up of windows at the TCF Center in Detroit. Now, why was this done? - Early on Wednesday, November 4th groups of people had been trying to take pictures and video of the ballot counting process and were chanting "let us in" or "stop the count", according to the Detroit Free Press, which distracted the ballot counters and made them feel intimidated. Thus, security placed cardboard over the windows. According to Michigan Legislature Section 168.678 (MCL 168.678), "Each board of election inspectors shall possess full authority to maintain peace, regularity and order at its polling place, and to enforce obedience to their lawful commands during any primary or election and during the canvass of the votes after the poll is closed," so boarding up the windows was a measure to maintain peace and regularity considering the chanting and such going on in the groups outside the ballot counting area. There is also this false notion that the only people counting votes in the TCF Center were Democrats - unsurprisingly this is not the case. The Detroit Free Press reports that "Under election rules, each group contesting the vote is allowed to have 134 challengers monitor the counting process," and identified that on that Wednesday 134 Democrats, Republicans, and independents were able to freely roam the room while the ballots were being counted that Wednesday. Being a poll watcher doesn't mean you can just walk into any polling station and expect to be allowed to oversee things: if the party you are affiliated with has reached its capacity then you cannot be allowed in. Furthermore, TCF center was overcapacity, according to Lawrence Garcia, Detroit’s lead attorney in another Detroit Free Press article. She shared this statement on the issue: "We were well over the 134 maximum. In the haste of doing business, nobody noticed that until it was over 200 for each party, and at that point, we said, we better stop admitting people until some people leave, and we’re under the 134 number.” The DFP article also identifies that "More than 100 Republican challengers remained inside the room where absentee ballots were being counted."

Michigan is again at the center of another piece of false "evidence" that there was voter fraud. Those hoping to prove this asinine claim point to a 118 year old man - William Bradley - voted via an absentee ballot. A video of this "proof" has been shared across twitter and eventually the Michigan Secretary of State clarified the issue: "Ballots of voters who have died are rejected in Michigan, even if the voter cast an absentee ballot and then died before Election Day. On rare occasions, a ballot received for a living voter may be recorded in a way that makes it appear as if the voter is dead. This can be because of voters with similar names, where the ballot is accidentally recorded as voted by John Smith Sr when it was actually voted by John Smith Jr; or because of inaccurately recorded birth dates in the qualified voter file; for example, someone born in 1990 accidentally recorded as born in 1890. In such scenarios, no one ineligible has actually voted, and there is no impact on the outcome of the election. Local clerks can correct the issue when it is brought to their attention." Daniel Baxter, a special consultant for the Detroit Department of Elections, echoed this notion: "No ballot for the 118-year-old Mr. Bradley was ever requested, received or counted. A man with a nearly identical name requested a ballot and voted properly in both the primary and general elections. When his ballot was initially logged, however, it was incorrectly attributed to the William Bradley born 118 years ago through a clerical error.” So yes, the video is real, but no that vote did not count and thus is not evidence of voter fraud. As it turns out, Bradley is alive and well in Detroit but his father, who shared the same name, died in 1984. Many claims of dead voters voting can easily be explained by placeholder dates (for example a date of birth of 1/1/1900) which remain unchanged when paper registration records went electronic and the birthdate was unknown or not filed correctly.

Another allegation that is provably false concerns the number of registered voters and votes cast in Wisconsin. This claim that Wisconsin has more votes than registered votes can be quickly debunked considering the state has same-day voter registration, even on election day. The Milwaukee Sentinel Journal states that "This is impossible — residents who are not registered to vote cannot cast a ballot," and also identifies that the state allows same-day voter registration. They point out that "the correct comparison is eligible voters, not registered ones." The official Wisconsin Elections Twitter account even put out a tweet stating that as of November 1st the state had 3,684,726 active registered voters and that there are never more ballots than registered voters. Furthermore, In total there were ~3,297,473 votes cast in the 2020 election in Wisconsin so there are fewer votes cast than registered voters.

Wisconsin is again the site of another popular bit of "evidence" of voter fraud. The story goes that the state supposedly magically found 100k votes laying around and many idiots refer to this as a "ballot dump." This is not the case. The Milwaukee Sentinel Journal reports that the increase was simply because the city of Milwaukee reported its absentee ballot results basically all at once: "These votes were all reported together because Milwaukee and 38 other communities used a central count location. Other communities counted absentee ballots at the polling places, and reported them along with their in-person vote totals." Green Bay also has a central count facility for absentee ballots. It would make sense that the majority of these votes were for Joe Biden, as Donald Trump repeatedly warned his supporters against mailing in their ballots and Republican voters typically prefer to vote in person. The PEW Research Center even reports that 60% of Trump voters would rather vote in person while roughly the same amount of Biden voters would rather vote by mail (Figure 4). Hunter Avallone sums this well in a tweet.

The Team Trump Twitter account has also fabricated their own claims of fraud, tweeting a video with a blind woman - Jill Stokke - who claims she was not allowed to vote and that her ballot was stolen. Her case was looked into and "Clark County Elections department who said they did offer Stokke an opportunity to cast another ballot if she would attest in writing her account, but said that Stokke had declined this," according to a local news station. However, despite believing that her ballot was stolen and her vote was taken away from her, Stokke refused to submit an official complaint and cast a provisional ballot. If she was so worked up over this apparent evidence of fraud and went on TV with the Trump campaign, why would she not want to cast her vote as she intended to cast it? Smells fishy to me. Additionally, some of Stokke’s claims clearly contradict one another: her civil complaint states that she cast her ballot on Election Day, but her sworn affidavit said that she participated in early voting on October 27. A judge in Nevada even rejected a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and the Nevada Republican Party which sought to halt the counting of early ballots collected in Clark County, stating that the plaintiffs failed to produce any evidence to support their claims that election officials were violating state laws.

Los Angeles has also been the site of some rumors and "evidence" of voter fraud. A viral video allegedly shows men emptying out bags of ballots into the trash, which has to be evidence of widespread voter fraud right? Wrong. The Hill Reporter references tweets from the Los Angeles County Registrar which explains the context of the video. One tweet reads "videos clips of ballots being collected from #LACounty Official Vote by Mail Drop Boxes -- Yes, they are ballots; valid, legally cast ballots collected and processed by authorized election officials in accordance with the California Elections Code." Another tweet in response to a question reads: "The Drop Boxes are closed and locked at 8 PM on Election Night and then collected the following day. These are valid ballots processed and counted during the post election canvass. Local certification in CA is on Nov 30."

Data from the US Election Assistance Commission

• Data from the Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAV) administered by the EAC shows that since 2004 more and more people have been electing to vote by mail or absentee ballot (Figure 8 below).

  • Specifically, the EAC identifies that mail in or absentee votes went from one in five ballots cast to two in five ballots cast: "The total number of voters who voted early, absentee or by mail more than doubled from 24.9 million in 2004 to 57.2 million in 2016, representing an increase from one in five of all ballots cast to two in five of all ballots cast." Thus, mail in and absentee ballots accounted for 40% of all votes in the 2016 presidential election, as per the New York Times.

Using this data from the EAC it's evident that 51,535,492 votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were absentee ballots or mail in ballots. In 2016, the Heritage Foundation identifies seven criminal convictions which resulted from fraudulent use of absentee ballots. Unfortunately, only two of the convictions specify the number of ballots falsified (one specifies 30 fraudulent ballots, another specifies just one fraudulent ballot) but let's assume that the others falsified 1,000 each so that makes 5,031 fraudulent absentee or mail in ballots cast in the 2016 election. This means that 0.004% of all absentee and mail in ballots in the 2016 presidential elections were fraudulent (5,031/128,838,734 total votes = 0.00004, multiplied by 100 that's 0.004).

Based on this math it is evident that 0.004% of 40% of votes cast in the 2016 election were fraudulent. So let's apply this to Biden's popular vote total and his total in some swing states. Obviously more of Biden's total votes were cast by mail due to the COVID19 pandemic, let's say 65% of his votes were by absentee or mail in ballots rather than the 40% established in 2016. As of 3:30 PM MT, the New York times reports that Biden has 80,992,666 votes, 65% of which is 52,645,233. 0.004% of that is 2,106, bringing Biden's popular vote total to, 80,990,560, still way ahead of Trump. Accounting for voter fraud rates established in the 2016 presidential election adjusted for 2020, Biden still wins the popular vote by a wide margin.

All state specific vote tallies below come from the New York Times. Also I wrote this all on December 3rd so the vote totals could have changed since then.

Let's look specifically at the state of Wisconsin. Biden has won the state's electoral points with 1,630,716 votes, meaning 1,059,956 (65%) of those votes were cast with absentee or mail in ballots. 0.004% of that number is 42 ([42/1,059,956] x 100 = 0.004), making 42 fraudulent votes cast for Biden in Wisconsin in this model. Subtract those from his previous total and Biden now has 1,630,674 votes and still wins the state. Accounting for voter fraud rates established in the 2016 presidential election adjusted for 2020, Biden still wins the state of Wisconsin.

Moving on let's look at Michigan. Biden has won the state's electoral points with 2,804,040 votes, meaning 1,822,626 (65%) of those votes were cast with absentee or mail in ballots. 0.004% of that number is 72 ([72/1,822,626] x 100 = 0.004), making 72 fraudulent votes cast for Biden in Michigan in this model. Subtract those from his previous total and Biden now has 2,803,968 votes and still wins the state. Accounting for voter fraud rates established in the 2016 presidential election adjusted for 2020, Biden still wins the state of Michigan.

We now turn our attention towards Pennsylvania. Biden has won the state's electoral college points with 3,460,045 votes, meaning 2,249,029 (65%) of those votes were cast with absentee or mail in ballots. 0.004% of that number is 90 ([90/2,249,029] x 100 = 0.004), making 90 fraudulent votes cast for Biden in Pennsylvania. Subtract those from his previous total and Biden now has 3,459,955 votes and still wins the state. Accounting for voter fraud rates established in the 2016 presidential election adjusted for 2020, Biden still wins the state of Pennsylvania.

So based on absentee and mail in ballot data from 2016 which was adjusted to 2020 to the overall results of the 2020 election - a Biden victory - do not change.

As of 7:00 PM MT Joe Biden has 81,237,902 votes - 7,048,912 more than Donald Trump who has 74,188,990. Still assuming 65% of votes cast for Biden in 2020 were absentee or mail in ballots that would make 52,804,636 of Biden's votes absentee or mail in ballots, meaning ~13.35% of them would need to be fraudulent in order for Biden to lose the popular vote. Thus, there would have a to be 3,337x more voter fraud in the 2020 election than in the 2016 election (that's an increase of 834,250%) for Biden to have lost the popular vote and thus probably the election. Here's the math:

81,237,902 (Biden's overall vote total) - 7,409,419 (13.35% of the estimated absentee ballots cast for Biden which are fraudulent in this model) = 73,828,483 votes for Biden, meaning Trump has won the popular vote.

7,409,419 is 13.35% of the estimated absentee and mail in ballots cast for Biden: (7,409,419/52,804,636) x 100 = 13.35%

0.004x3,337 = 13.35

0.004 x 3,337 = 13.35 and 13.35/0.004 = 3,337

3,337/0.004 = 834,250 and 0.004 x 834,250 = 3,337

A declassified report by the National Intelligence Council found that

• No indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter the technical aspect of voting in the 2020 election including voter registration, casting ballots, voting tabulation, or reporting results.

  • "We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to interfere in the 2020 US elections by altering any technical aspect of the voting process , including voter registration , ballot casting, vote tabulation , or reporting results . We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves , through physical and cyber security monitoring around voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits of electronic results and paper backups."

• President Putin authorized a range of Russian government institutions to conduct "influence operations" aimed at denigrating Biden's candidacy and the Democratic party and supporting Trump. These operations also aimed to undermine confidence in the electoral process.

  • "We assess that President Putin and the Russian state authorized and conducted influence operations against the 2020 US presidential election aimed at denigrating President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process , and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US. Unlike in2016 , we did not see persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure ."

  • "We assess that Russian leaders viewed President Biden's potential election as disadvantageous to Russian interests and that this drove their efforts to undermine his candidacy. We have high confidence in this assessment."

  • "Some foreign actors , such as Iran and Russia, spread false or inflated claims about alleged compromises of voting systems to try to undermine public confidence in election processes and results."

• China considered influence efforts but ultimately did not deploy influence efforts to change the outcome of the election.

  • "We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election . We have high confidence in this judgment."

After receiving a letter from Dominion's defamation lawyers the American Thinker (essentially being faced with potential consequences for lying) has issued a retraction on their claims that Dominion conspired to steal the November 2020 election from Donald Trump. Regarding pieces they published which alleged Dominion's involvement in some scheme to steal the election the statement says: "These pieces rely on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories about Dominion’s supposed ties to Venezuela, fraud on Dominion’s machines that resulted in massive vote switching or weighted votes, and other claims falsely stating that there is credible evidence that Dominion acted fraudulently. These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact. Industry experts and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself appropriately and that there is simply no evidence to support these claims." In the statement, American Thinker also identifies that they abandoned nine journalistic principles and that it was wrong for them to publish the false statements. MediaIte has reported on this too.

The website/database has been used as "evidence" of the alleged widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election yet provides little to nothing that actually would support an argument that Biden/Democrats stole the election from Trump.

All analysis of the data on the website was done on December 28th, 2020.

In general, this database employs the gish galloping technique: attempting to overwhelm someone with a barrage/excess of arguments or data without regard to the accuracy or strength of the argument, knowing the person they're debating against doesn't have time to fact-check/research into all the claims they've made in real time. The wealth of "evidence" on the database may look impressive and able to convince any idiot who is too lazy to actually look into any of the entries, but it is banking on that laziness or stupidity to be convincing. It relies on the bias of the visitor, if someone visits the site who feels that the Democrats cheated with widespread fraud and stole the election from Trump they would just simply look at all the entries and feel as though because there are a lot of them, the database has to know what it's talking about and it all must be true so their preconceived notion is affirmed by simply seeing there is a lot of information on the database: "Stupid libtard there was election fraud look at this website that says it has evidence of voter fraud and look how many links it has." However, when you look into each bit of "evidence" you see how little it actually supports this narrative of the election being stolen.

Of the "verified" submissions on the website only two include the word "democrat." One references something in 1994, so it is not relevant to 2020, and the other references a court case in which a plaintiff challenged the results of the election because observers where too far away. The court ruled that the plaintiff had "no statutory basis to challenge signature mismatched" and that the allegations do not amount to misconduct. Furthermore, the court notes that the "Plaintiff’s own inspection of sampled ballots showed an error rate of only .37%" which could net Trump only 103 votes. Of the "verified" submissions, there are only three of which that include the word "Biden" and those three entries are marked with a 1 or a 2, denoting that they are extremely insignificant (the data base uses numbers which correlate to the significance of the "evidence" with a 1 being the least significant and a 4! being the most significant). There are no entries with the word "liberal" included. Thus, it is an astounding leap in logic to attribute the majority of these claims to Biden or democrats or liberals when not one of the claims relating to one of the three is marked as significant or has a court ruling that finds any of the three parties explicitly guilty of voter fraud.

Despite the apparent nature of the database to catalogue voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election, there are many entries which are not relevant to it whatsoever. There is an entry that references something tied to Obama in 1996, an entry that references a 2018 election in Texas, another entry which references something from 1994, and so on.

The website does not offer what metrics they use to "verify" any of the information and aside from an email and links to Twitter and other social media, there is no contact information or identification of the authors or curators of this database. This is "evidence" that has been collected amorously and "verified" anonymously with no distinction between what is and isn't verifiable. If you're too scared or unwilling to put your name on something like this likely it's because you don't want it to be traced back to you with legal repercussions or do not stand by the work.

The database specifies that 1,744,440 ballots have been "touched by anomalies," yet does not specify if these ballots were counted or which candidate they were marked for. Even assuming that every one of these ballots was counted and that each was a vote for Joe Biden, he would still win the popular vote and thus probably the election if these 1,744,440 were subtracted from his current popular vote total. The New York Times and FOX News both identify that Biden has ~81,283,000 votes and Trump has ~74,223,00 votes. Subtract that 1,744,440 from Biden's total and he now has 79,538,560 votes, more than five million more than Trump. Using this database's own estimations of how many potentially illegal votes there were, and assuming they were all counted and cast for Biden, Biden still wins the popular vote and thus probably the election.

The database also focuses on Pennsylvania and specifies that 15,517 mail-in ballots were received in Pennsylvania after November 6th. Now remember, Pennsylvania can count ballots received after election day up until 5PM on the 6th, assuming the ballot was postmarked on the 3rd. Although the database does not specify if these ballots were counted or what candidate they were for, even assuming they all were counted and cast for Biden he still wins the state if 15,517 is subtracted from his total. The New York Times and FOX News identify that Biden won the state by ~81,660 votes, so subtracting that 15,517 Biden still wins the state, just by 66,143 votes.

Research from the Heritage Foundation Database

• The Heritage Foundation identifies 145 criminal convictions as a result of "fraudulent use of absentee ballots" over the past 20 years. On average, that is 7.25 (we'll round down to 7) cases of voter fraud through absentee ballots per year. Far from whatever nonsense Trump spews.

• This data was also referenced in an article published in The Hill co-authored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology election expert Charles Stewart III (at the time of publishing the figure stood at 143).

  • "It also means that across the 50 states, there has been an average of three cases per state over the 20-year span. That is just one case per state every six or seven years. We are talking about an occurrence that translates to about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast."

Paper from Dēmos: A Network for Ideas & Action - "An Analysis of Voter Fraud in the United States"

• This research is an updated version of a previously published 2003 work "Securing the Vote" and finds that

  • "Voter fraud appears to be very rare in the 12 states examined in that report. Legal and news records turned up little evidence of significant fraud in these states or any indication that fraud is more than a minor problem. Interviews with state officials further confirmed this impression."

  • "Notable election reforms of the past 10 to 15 years—such as the NVRA, more permissive absentee balloting rules, all mail-in voting in Oregon, and the enactment of Election Day Registration in several more states—have not facilitated voter fraud."

  • "The low level of voter fraud in the United States today does not preclude the need for continued vigilance to ensure the integrity of election systems. It does, however, suggest that reforms aimed at simplifying registration and voting can be implemented without risking corruption of elections by fraud."

• Overall, this paper identifies how extremely rare voter fraud is and that reforms to voting such as the NVRA, certain absentee ballot rules, etc... pose little threat to the integrity of American elections.

Research from a Trump led taskforce on voter fraud

• After losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Trump was out to prove that it was he who had actually won the popular vote, if you deducted the "millions of people who voted illegally." No such thing would happen. The voting integrity commission Trump put together only met twice and was dispended just a year later after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In a letter to vice president Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Maine secretary of state Matthew Dunlap stated that Pence and Kobach's statements on the widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election were false, after he was able to look at all of the data collected by the commission.

Research from the Brennan Center for Justice - "The Truth About Voter Fraud"

• States that photo ID laws "are effective only in preventing individuals from impersonating other voters at the polls — an occurrence more rare than getting struck by lightning."

Research from Colombia University in partnership with Project Vote - "The Politics of Voter Fraud"

• This paper, published in 2018, calls the very notion of voter fraud threatening the integrity of American elections fraud itself due to a lack of evidence: "The claim that voter fraud threatens the integrity of American elections is itself a fraud. It is being used to persuade the public that deceitful and criminal voters are manipulating the electoral system. No available evidence suggests that voters are intentionally corrupting the electoral process, let alone in numbers that dilute and cancel out 'the lawful votes of the vast majority of Americans.'"

• Among the key findings is that "Most voter fraud allegations turn out to be something other than fraud. A review of news stories over a recent two year period found that reports of voter fraud were most often limited to local races and individual acts and fell into three categories: unsubstantiated or false claims by the loser of a close race, mischief and administrative or voter error."

• The paper uses the Justice Department's definition of voter fraud: "conduct that corrupts the process by which ballots are obtained, marked, or tabulated; the process by which election results are canvassed and certified; or the process by which voters are registered," and also identifies "Apparent acts of fraud that result from voter mistakes or isolated individual wrongdoing or mischief making not aimed at corrupting the voting process should not be considered fraud"

• The paper argues that there is a tremendous lack of evidence to substantiate claims of voter fraud being widespread and corrupting or diluting lawful votes.

  • "available evidence here suggests that voters rarely commit voter fraud"

  • The paper identifies that a project at the US Department of Justice - the Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative - has only resulted in a handful of convictions. Between 2002 and 2005, "Government records show that only 24 people were convicted of or pleaded guilty to illegal voting between 2002 and 2005, an average of eight people a year. This includes 19 people who were ineligible to vote, five because they were still under state supervision for felony convictions, and 14 who were not U.S. citizens; and five people who voted twice in the same election, once in Kansas and again in Missouri."

  • The paper also identifies this interesting fact: "Even though many criminal acts associated with 'voter fraud' are classified as felonies, voter fraud fails to appear in the F.B.I.’s uniform crime reports. There are no publicly available criminal justice databases that include voter fraud as a category of crime. No states collect and publish statistics on voter fraud."

Harvard News Article - "The Perils of Cherry Picking Low Frequency Events in Large Sample Surveys"

• Debunks a "biased estimate of the rate at which non-citizens voted in recent election," and ultimately finds that "the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0."

Research from News21/Arizona State University - "Comprehensive Database of U.S. Voter Fraud Uncovers No Evidence That Photo ID Is Needed"

• "analysis of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases since 2000 shows that while fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal"

• Their database shows just 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud across the 13 year period measured (2000-2012). This averages out to 38 cases of absentee ballot fraud every year. The database also shows 56 cases of non US citizens voting, averaging out to 4 cases every year.

Press Release from Dartmouth - "Dartmouth Study Finds No Evidence of Voter Fraud"

• This press release is in regards to a paper Dartmouth College researchers were working on around the time of the 2016 election and it identifies that "researchers have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election."

• Study co-author Michael C. Herron: "Many of these allegations of voter fraud were based on concerns that massive numbers of non-citizens would cast ballots in the election; however, my co-authors and I found no evidence that there was rampant voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. As we note in the study, the voter fraud fears fomented and espoused by the Trump campaign are not grounded in any observable features of the election."

Department of Justice Press Release - "Conference To Focus On Election Fraud, Voting Rights"

• Identifies that between 2002 and 2005, only 89 people have been charged with election fraud offenses and 52 have been charged: "Finally, since the start of the initiative, 89 individuals have been charged with election fraud offenses. To date, 52 of these individuals have been convicted." This averages out to 22 individuals charged with voter fraud every year and just 13 convicted.

The GOP does Voter Fraud

Link - Campaign staffer for GOP congressional candidate in Virginia commits ballot petition fraud.

Link - Registered Republican does voter fraud.

Link - QANON idiot does voter fraud, tries to deliver truck with fake votes.

Link - Trump voter in Pennsylvania charged with voter fraud.

Trump urged supporters to go vote in person, even after voting by mail, essentially telling them to vote twice. "So, send it [the ballot] in early, and then go and vote," he said to supporters in North Carolina. This would be a felony in NC, as is indicting someone to vote twice like Trump did here. This is stated in N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §163-275.

The Supreme Court recently ruled against voter ID laws in North Carolina, stating that the provisions "target African Americans with almost surgical precision" and also that the restrictions "constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist." The Supreme Court also states "we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent." You can read what I am pulling quotes from here as well as a New York Times article about it here.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion on a 2011 senate bill passed in Texas (SB14) which "requires individuals to present one of several forms of photo identification in order to vote," identified that in the 2008 and 2010 elections, only two of the millions of votes cast ended in a conviction for voter impersonation fraud: "Yet, one might expect that when the Legislature places a bill on an expedited schedule and subjects it to such an extraordinary degree of procedural irregularities, as was the case with SB 14, such a bill would address a problem of great magnitude. Ballot integrity is undoubtedly a worthy goal. But the evidence before the Legislature was that in-person voting, the only concern addressed by SB 14, yielded only two convictions for in-person voter impersonation fraud out of 20 million votes cast in the decade leading up to SB 14’s passage." It also identified that SB14 was passed with discriminatory intent: "The district court held that SB 14 was enacted with a racially discriminatory purpose, has a racially discriminatory effect, is a poll tax, and unconstitutionally burdens the right to vote."

• More on discrimination:"(discussing studies and other evidence supporting the view that voter ID laws, although not resulting in 'huge' decreases in turnout, have an effect primarily on 'low-income and minority groups' that favor Democrats). Indeed, the highly polarized nature of voting in Texas along racial lines (according to exit polls from the last gubernatorial election, 72% of whites, 44% percent of Latinos, and 7% of African-Americans voted for the Republican winner) makes depressing minority turnout a strong proxy for suppressing Democratic turnout."

In another Texas case related to SB14, courts found that "In-person voter impersonation is extremely rare in Texas elections. From 2002 to the present, there has been one conviction and one guilty plea of which the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is aware that involved in-person voter impersonation in any election in the State of Texas. The Secretary of State’s Office is not aware of any additional conviction."

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an opinion striking down a restrictive North Carolina election law requiring ID to vote in person, identified that the state "failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina," and that the law was discriminatory in nature, as black people were more to likely to vote in person than white people: "legislature also had evidence that absentee voting was not disproportionately used by African Americans; indeed, whites disproportionately used absentee voting ."

A federal trial in Wisconsin reviewing the state's photo ID law found that "there is virtually no voter-impersonation fraud in Wisconsin" and "such procedures are not required to protect the states’ interests in preventing fraud and promoting voter confidence," that the law violated the 14th amendment.

Basically, most voter ID laws to try and combat voter fraud are sometimes thinly veiled attempts to stop minorities and black people from voting.

I think conservatives are so opposed to the concept of mail-in voting because it essentially nullifies all the work they've done to suppress voter turnout in densely populated urban areas where voters are more likely to vote for Democrats. To understand what I mean, we'll have to travel back to 2013.

In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated a portion of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v Holder case. They specifically took issue with section 4(b) and section 5 which prohibited certain districts from enacting changes to their election laws and procedures without gaining official authorization and identified such districts. Those districts were the ones where racial discrimination had been most prevalent, as justice.gov states. So the Supreme Court ruling was basically saying "hey places that previously had a lot of racial discrimination, you can start making changes to election laws and practices whenever you want." The result? - Many Southern states made changes that made it harder for people to vote. One report estimated that 1,688 polling places had closed across the nation following the Shelby case. Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had closed the most polling places according to the report. Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama have some of the biggest black populations in America (at least by percent) and Texas is the second most diverse state.

Kinda weird how all the red states that were known for racially discriminatory voting practices and have the highest percentage of minority populations all decided to restrict voting access isn't it?

There shouldn't be multiple hour-long wait lines, voting hours should be longer, and it shouldn't be illegal to give food and water to people standing in line like it is in Georgia. Laws like these are obviously intended to suppress voter turnout and give Republicans an advantage. These laws will have the biggest effect in large cities since the more people, the longer the lines will be. And these cities will have more democrat voters than republicans. This part of the reason why Republicans are so against mail in voting - it nullifies the suppressive laws they have in place by allowing people to easily mail in their vote rather than spending 3 hours in line.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach successfully pressed the Legislature to make him the only secretary of state in the nation with the power to prosecute in cases of voter fraud after asserting that he was aware of 100 such cases in Kansas. Despite apparently knowing about so many cases, he has only filed six cases since the law went into effect. Kobach won only four of these six cases, each coming against men 60 years or older who showed no intent to "game the system." Kobach's own data even showed just 14 cases of voter fraud in 84 million votes across 22 states, representing 0.00000017 percent of the votes cast. This occurred around 2015 and two years later in 2017, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson found that Kobach had "scant evidence of noncitizen voter fraud that occurred in Kansas" in a trial. In a 2016 case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit came to a similar conclusion, identifying that Kobach has "precious little record evidence" to his claims about non citizens voting in Kansas: "Kansas represented in its request letter that between 2003 and 2015 eighteen non-citizens had tried to or successfully registered to vote."

Research from Dartmouth - "The Effects of Unsubstantiated Claims of Voter Fraud on Confidence in Elections"

• Ultimately finds that those exposed to unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, regardless of how high or low the dosage of the exposure was, would still have lower confidence in elections even when the misinformation had been fact checked. Unsurprisingly, the research found that Trump supporters and Republicans are more likely to have lower confidence in elections even when exposed to a low dose of unsubstantiated claims that had been fact checked.

  • "We found that respondents exposed to either low or high doses of voter fraud claims reported less confidence in elections than those in a placebo condition. These effects did not vary measurably between the low and high dosage conditions, nor did we find that fact-checks measurably reduced the effects of fraud allegation exposure."

  • "Most notably, however, we find that both Republicans and Trump approvers reported significantly lower confidence in elections after exposure to a low dose of voter fraud allegations even when those claims were countered by fact-checks (compared to those in a placebo condition). These findings reinforce previous research on the potential lasting effects of exposure to misinformation even after it is discredited."