Case Closed: Trump’s Election Fraud Claims are Baseless, Empirical Analysis Confirms

Even after officially losing the election and vacating the White House, Trump continues to object to the election results. A common refrain from Trump’s objections is that many of his election cases were never actually heard in court, because the plaintiffs lacked standing. According to Trump and his allies’ objections, if the cases had been heard, they would have revealed that Trump won the election. For example, in August 2023 Trump announced, and then canceled, a news conference that would detail “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.” Then in January 2023 Trump released an unsigned 32 page memo supposedly detailing evidence of fraud and illegality in the 2020 election (Anonymous ,2023) .

In this paper we perform an extensive examination of claims made in Trump’s legal challengers and in subsequent public statements about the 2020 election. We focus specifically on two sorts of claims. One set of empirical claims were made using registration files, voter history files, absentee voter files, and merges with other administrative data sets: such as data from the post office, individuals who are deceased, or lists of felons or other supposedly ineligible voters. A second set are statistical claims made about aggregate voting patterns that identify supposedly anomalous patterns consistent with voter fraud

We examine 38 empirical claims, constituting the most complete assessment of empirical voter fraud claims from the 2020 election to date. 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. One reason that the claims fail is that they are not based on facts (Eggers et al., 2021). We find that many claims misstate turnout histories, incorrectly characterize candidate’s performance, or are just simply mistaken. A second reason that claims fail is that they are based on an inappropriate or incorrect application of statistical models.

Regardless of the reason why, every claim we analyze fails to provide evidence of illegality or fraud. But what is even more remarkable is that none of the claims presented are remotely convincing. We document that the supposed evidence of fraud that Trump relies upon is riddled with basic statistical misunderstandings and errors, confusion about how to use voter files or absentee voter history to analyze turnout and registration, and invented statistical techniques based on the impressions of what happens in a “normal” election from “experts “who never previously analyzed election data and provide no argument to justify their procedures. At no point did Trump or his allies present even remotely plausible evidence of consequential fraud or illegality.

This paper is part of a much broader literature evaluating claims made about the 2020election and voter fraud claims more generally. Our effort to provide a more comprehensive assessment of empirical voter fraud claims follows Danforth et al. (2022) who provide an expansive and impressive comprehensive view of claims made in Trump litigation. As we document in this paper, many of the claims made in Trump’s initial court filings were refuted in expert reports that we discuss in this paper (Stewart, 2020a; Rodden, 2020; Rodden and Marble, 2020; Ansolabehere, 2020; Mayer, 2020; King, 2020; Herron, 2020). There have also been other academic papers that examine voter fraud claims from the 2020 election. Eggers et al. (2021) examine several broadly disseminated claims of “anomalous” election results and show these claims are either simply false, or technically true but not evidence of fraud. Grimmer et al. (2023) examine more expansive claims made after the 2020 election that allege every election is being manipulated. Grofman and Cervas (2023) examines the logical structure of voter fraud claims and show that they fail as a matter of basic logic. And Herron (2023) shows that there is no evidence Biden performed better in counties with Dominion machines.

We organize our assessment of the claims made about the 2020 election based on the specific states the claims target and the type of allegation made. That said, many of the claims analyzed in one state were also made in other states. We first focus our analysis on nationwide claims, or claims involving several states’ results and voting systems. We then provide an extensive analysis of Georgia elections, because Georgia is the location of perhaps the most aggressive objections to the 2020 election. We then analyze claims in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But the claims we analyze also cover many of the objections raised in Arizona and Nevada.

….

7. Fraud Claims and the 2020 Election
In this paper we have provided an extensive assessment of voter fraud claims from the 2020election. Across all the distinct claims that we analyzed, we find no credible evidence of voter fraud. But most surprising is just how weak the evidence of illegal or fraudulent voting really is. The claims made in Trump’s legal filings are based on error riddled analyses from “experts” who misunderstand basic facts about elections, basic statistical concepts, and fail to justify the statistical tests that are used. Not only was Trump’s evidence insufficient to establish sufficient illegal or fraudulent voting to overturn the election. The supposed evidence is essentially useless and only reflects the profound misunderstandings of the individuals who provided the reports to the Trump campaign.

In the immediate future the 2020 election is likely to continue to be litigated. Trump and his allies face indictment in federal court, Georgia, and Trump will likely press his case on the campaign trail that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Yet, Trump simply lacks the evidence for these claims. Across numerous expert reports an academic papers, there simply is no evidence that fraud or illegal voting decided the 2020 election.

References
Anonymous (2023). Summary of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election in the swing states. Avalable athttps://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/e0/e04e630c-63ff-4bdb-9652-e0be3598b5d4/summary20of20election20fraud20in20the20swing20states.pdf.

Ansolabehere, Stephen (2020). Expert report of stephen ansolabehere. Pearson v Kemp, No. 1:20-cv-04809-TCB, Northern District of Georgia.

Danforth, John , Benjamin Ginsberg, Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Theodore B. Olson, and Gordon H. Smith (2022). LOST, NOTSTOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election.https://lostnotstolen.org//wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Lost-Not-Stolen-The-Conservative-Case-that-Trump-Lost-and-Biden-Won-the-2020-Presidential-Election-July-2022.pdf (last accessed October 12, 2022).

Eggers, Andrew C. , Haritz Garro, and Justin Grimmer (2021). No evidence for systematic voter fraud: A guide to statistical claims about the 2020 election. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(45), e2103619118.

Grimmer, Justin , Michael Herron, and Matthew Tyler (2023). Evaluating anew generation of expansive claims about vote manipulation. Avalable here:https://www.dropbox.com/s/92lp1gmqw2pei8m/Expansive.pdf?dl=0.

Grofman, Bernard and Jonathan Cervas (2023). Statistical fallacies in claims about ‘massive and widespread fraud’ in the 2020 presidential election: Examining claims based on aggregate election results. Statistics and Public Policy, 1–36.

Herron, Michael (2020). Expert report of michael herron. Law v Whitmer, First Judicial District Court, Carson City, Nevada.

Herron, Michael (2023). Allegations made against dominion voting systems and the 2020presidential election in wisconsin. Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 22(3),247–267.

King, Gary (2020). Expert report of gary king. Bowyer v Ducey, No. 1:20-cv-02321, District Court of Arizona.

Mayer, Kenneth (2020). Expert report of kenneth mayer. Pearson v Kemp, No. 1:20-cv-04809-TCB, Northern District of Georgia.

Rodden, Jonathan (2020). Expert report of jonathan rodden. Pearson v Kemp, No. 1:20-cv-04809-TCB, Northern District of Georgia.

Rodden, Jonathan and Will Marble (2020). Expert report of jonathan rodden and will marble. Pearson v Kemp, No. 1:20-cv-04809-TCB, Northern District of Georgia.

Stewart, Charles (2020a). Expert report of charles stewart. Trump v Raffensperger, No.2020CV343255, Fulton County.