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By JTTC

In early November of 2020, the United States of American held its 59th presidential election to determine whether the incumbent president Donald Trump would retain office or would be forced out by challengers, specifically Joe Biden. This was no ordinary election, at least by the standards of previous presidential elections. For years the United States has been grappling with deep social wounds. This election has poured salt onto many of these wounds from racial issues concerning police conduct, deep-seated mistrust of the federal government, to the fundamental identity of what it means to be an American. On top of this, the nation continues to grapple with a pandemic that has killed over a quarter-million people and takes another 1,000 nearly every single day. Aside from this, the actual election has been marked by one shocking incident to another, from one candidate catching COVID-19 to the attempted assassination of a U.S. governor. One of the most astonishing incidents was the claim by the sitting president that the U.S. electoral process had been subverted across the nation and that we were incapable of democratically selecting our leaders as a result of this. More specifically this claim was that the election was tainted by widespread voter fraud and that because of this the election results should be overturned.

Voter fraud is the act of sabotaging an election. More specifically, this is represented by falsely inflating or deflating the votes that a candidate has. This can be done in a variety of ways. In movies, TV shows and similar media this is usually done through ballot stuffing, forced voting or something similar by often mysterious and vaguely powerful entities. These kinds of acts were seen in the Russian 2018 presidential elections where several of these incidents were caught on video and documented by election observers. The other ways voter fraud is committed is at an individual level through actions like double voting or impersonating another voter. This kind of fraud typically has minimal chance of affecting an election given the tiny fraction of votes that can even be affected. While the threat of this kind of fraud is minimal, the general threat of fraud can be very real. In Belarus, widespread electoral fraud by the administration of Alexander Lukashenko has led to a dictatorial regime unrecognized by the other members of the European Union or the United States. However, the U.S. has long been considered to have an incredibly fraud-free, safe and secure election process. In large part, this is because the chances of getting caught are extremely high with some states like Arizona stripping your ability to vote as punishment not to mention fines and jail time. The allegation that this process has been compromised implies that the foundational aspect of the American Republic, democratic elections, has been compromised as well.  

In the U.S. the history of voting has been marred by a wide variety of actions. Some of these actions come in the ways that American’s were barred from voting with African American voting rights only being affirmed in 1870, almost 100 years after the foundation of the Republic. It took another half-century for women to receive this very same right. Even then these constitutional amendments did not prevent states, especially in the southern U.S., from enacting legislation intended to prevent people of color from voting. The situation became so bad that the federal government had to enact the 1965 Voting Rights Act to enforce rights already guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution for almost a century at that point. Today voter suppression is still a problem with many Americans having difficulty exercising their democratic rights. In 2018, 70% of all voters purged from voter rolls in Georgia were Black. For context, the number of purged voters was roughly 310,000. The most troubling part of this was that nearly 200,000 of these purged voters were wrongly purged, that’s over a 60% error rate. Imagine if you went to a doctor with a 60% error rate. This kind of voter suppression is not unique to Georgia and Americans, especially Americans of color have a justified reason to be skeptical of how elections are conducted in this country. While the history of voter suppression is well documented and empirically proven, allegations of widespread systematic voter fraud are not.

Voter fraud within the U.S. is exceedingly rare and that’s putting it mildly. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation actually track instances of voter fraud over the last 20 years. To sum up this data there have been roughly 1,300 cases of voter fraud in the last 20 years. That translates to roughly 8 cases every year or 1 case in every state roughly every 8 years. Of affected votes that are less than 0.00007 percent of total votes cast. Some of these cases involve individuals who believe the safe option was to vote twice like Terri Lynn Rote who attempted to vote twice for Donald Trump. The highest-profile possible case was when North Carolina political operative Leslie McCrae Dowless worked on the reelection of Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris. Dowless was accused of harvesting hundreds of unfilled absentee ballots and filling them in for Republican candidate Mark Harris. The election had to be run again as a result of this incident and Harris did not enter the running the second time around. However, for the 59th presidential election, it would take more than one person stealing unfilled absentee ballots. Furthermore, a joint statement released by local, state and federal officials endorsed by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. government issued a public statement “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised”. Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump fired the head of this agency for his loyalty to the Union over the president. The reality of voter fraud in the United States is that while it does happen, it is exceedingly, almost mythically rare. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning. A conspiracy to defraud the 2020 presidential election would be the largest case of voter fraud in American history, it would possibly be the largest criminal conspiracy to directly affect American politics since Jimmy Hoffa and his associates.

If the chances of voter fraud are so low, then why is the sitting president asserting that there has been voter fraud? It’s likely unsurprising to hear that this isn’t the first time that Donald Trump has asserted voter fraud. In 2016, Donald Trump asserted that millions of people had committed voter fraud as the reason he lost the popular vote. However, Trump’s own voting integrity commission found no evidence to support his claims. Unsurprisingly, Trump is now touting the same line from 2016 and there’s the same amount of evidence, none. Even media outlets and political allies to the president have recognized Biden as the incoming president. Unsurprisingly, Trump hasn’t attempted to overrule or allege fraud in down-ticket elections that went to Republicans in Pennsylvania, Arizona or Wisconsin, despite these elections being on the same ballots as the presidential election. It would be easy to condemn Donald Trump as a tinpot wannabe dictator unsuccessfully attempting a coup. The likely reality is far more boring and pathetic. The reality is that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Disappointingly, Trump’s ego has always gotten into the way he has perceived reality. One of his first actions once inaugurated was to publicly dispute the size of his inauguration day crowd size despite photographic evidence proving him wrong. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Much like a spoiled child who has lost a game, Trump would rather resort to throwing a tantrum about the unfairness of the game, accusing the other of cheating and refusing to admit they’ve lost. This doesn’t change the state of the game because the child is spoiled, and it doesn’t change the state of the Union because the president is spoiled. However, unlike a game with a spoiled child, the integrity of the foundational principle of our Republic is at stake. Donald Trump may feel like he is entitled to overriding the electoral process, but the Republic derives its power from the people, through elections, not the goodwill of Donald Trump.

JTTC is a political writer for La Tonique.