DEMOCRACY WATCHCase Closed: Trump’s Election Fraud Claims are Baseless, Empirical Analysis Confirms
Between the November 2020 election and the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Trump’s legal team filed 62 lawsuits contesting the election results, and each one of them was dismissed – in many cases, by Trump-appointed judges — or dropped. “In each instance, we find that these claims fail to provide any evidence of fraud, illegality, or even an abnormality. One reason that the claims fail is that they are not based on facts,” write two experts who examined the claims of election fraud by Trump and his legal team.
Already in the run-up to the November 2020 election, then-candidate Donald Trump was busy plating doubts in the minds of voters about the integrity of the election, by spreading lies about how he could only lose the election if it were “rigged.” After he did lose the election fair and square, he intensified his Big Lie campaign, culminating in the 6 January efforts by his supporters, who stormed the U.S. capitol in order to prevent the peaceful transition of power to the winner of the election.
The 6 January assault on the U.S. capitol was staged after all of Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election were rejected by state and federal courts, in many cases by Trump-appointed judges.
In all, Trump’s legal team filed 62 lawsuits contesting the election results, and each one of them was rejected. Nearly all the suits were dismissed or dropped due to lack of evidence, and 30 of the lawsuits were dismissed by the judge after a hearing on the merits.
Only one ruling was initially in Trump’s favor: the timing within which first-time Pennsylvania voters must provide proper identification if they wanted to “cure” their ballots. This ruling affected very few votes, and it was later overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
In a new, in-depth examination of Trump’s claims about the supposedly “rigged” election, Justin Grimmer and Abhinav Ramaswamy found these claims to be false and without basis in facts.
“We examine 38 empirical claims, constituting the most complete assessment of empirical voter fraud claims from the 2020 election to date,” they write. “The claims were alleged in courts throughout the country, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In each instance, we find that these claims fail to provide any evidence of fraud, illegality, or even an abnormality.”
Grimmer and Ramaswamy don’t mince words: “One reason that the claims fail is that they are not based on facts.”
Here are the Introduction and Conclusions of their analysis:
1. Introduction
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump, his campaign, and political allies engaged in a sustained effort to challenge Joe Biden’s victory. This effort culminated with the events of January 6th, when Trump supporters stormed the US capitol to protest the official counting of ballots from the electoral college. But Donald Trump didn’t stop objecting to the election just because he left the White House.
