Opinion: Trying to prove Trump’s voter fraud claims? You’re better off looking for Bigfoot

Put the 2020 U.S. presidential election right up there with the grassy knoll, Bigfoot and UFOs. Anybody seen a suspicious-looking weather balloon filled with mail-in ballots floating over Roswell?

Our soon-to-be-former president, Donald Trump, has been insisting since before Nov. 3 that this election would be rigged and, to date, has unsuccessfully challenged the results of his “landslide” defeat in any court that will hear his case, if wild allegations not supported by any credible proof can even be called a case. Maybe Judge Judy will lend Rudy Giuliani a sympathetic ear? By the time Trump’s legal sideshow is finished, a few hundred thousand Trump ballots allegedly will have been buried in a hole somewhere in Michigan beside Jimmy Hoffa.

I shouldn’t make fun, because, really, there’s nothing funny about the disturbing state of our democracy. Sadly, thanks to Trump and feckless GOP senators and representatives like Rob Portman, Steve Chabot, Brad Wenstrup and Mitch McConnell, who have been hiding in their basements while Trump tries to burn down American democracy, millions of people are going to believe this conspiratorial tripe for a long time. That’s to say nothing of the millions of dollars Trump is fleecing from his supporters for his so-called legal fund to pay for this nonsense – and future rallies and campaign debt.

When people trust a man who has lied over 20,000 times more than our 230-year-old election system, America is in deep trouble.

No doubt, political corruption is real. Look no further than the horror show going on right now at 801 Plum St. (Three Cincinnati council members arrested for bribery in a year.) And cases of voting irregularities and fraud, while scant, do take place in almost every election. But the widespread voter fraud the president alleges is like something out of a bad episode of “The X-Files.” Maybe that makes some sense given the past four years under Trump have felt like “The Twilight Zone.”

Trump seems to think there’s been massive voter fraud only in the states he lost. Never mind he barely won North Carolina and Florida. Those states seem to have done everything perfectly, while the folks in Georgia and Arizona are corrupt to their core, even though those states are run by Republicans.

We’re lucky here in Ohio to be a battleground state where Trump is not questioning the election results. Maybe that’s because he won here by eight points. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a testament to our state’s preparedness and how very difficult it is to cheat.

I recently spoke with Ohio’s top elections official, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican who isn’t giving much credence to this mass voter fraud farce. He said Americans might need a civics refresher.

“There is this amazing human capacity for inventing conspiracy theories as it relates to elections that just have no basis in reality, but they circulate and people believe them,” LaRose said. “Given what I do for a living, every relative of mine who has heard some crazy thing on social media is calling me right now saying, “what about this and what about that?” And it’s all bunk.”

LaRose spends a fair amount of time debunking myths about voter fraud and voter suppression, which he says are overstated by both Democrats and Republicans to the detriment of trust in our elections.

He acknowledged, however, that some fraud does happen every year on a small scale.

“There will be somebody who forged a signature, or there will be somebody who tried to submit a ballot for their deceased spouse or whatever else,” LaRose said. “And if anyone, including the president, has evidence of that kind of stuff, bring it forward. But I just haven’t seen any evidence that convinces me that there is any kind of systemic widespread instances of voter fraud.”

LaRose said there’s a reason why voter fraud is exceedingly rare. “That is because we take it very seriously. We don’t tolerate it.”

Ohio, like many other states, has numerous laws and safeguards in place that make it virtually impossible to cheat. It starts with having the most up-to-date equipment – everything from signature authentication machines to letter openers – and accurate voter rolls that are free of deceased residents.

An unprecedented number of people cast their vote by absentee ballot this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Every registered voter in Ohio received an absentee ballot request form in the mail. Because most people don’t cancel their old voter registrations when they move to a different county, some people might have received forms for the former occupants of their home. It happened to me.

I received the absentee request forms for the couple that used to live at my home in West Chester. I asked LaRose if such an error presented a ripe opportunity for fraud.

“What you’re talking about is very serious and exceedingly uncommon. Someone would need to get the Social Security number, date of birth and then forge and closely match the signature of the person, all of which are felonies,” LaRose said. “If someone were able to do all of that and get it past the board of elections, in theory, they could commit fraud. But the likelihood of the person getting caught is very high, especially if the actual voters also showed up to vote. It would raise a red flag and launch an investigation by the board.”

Then there is the fact that everything in the elections process is super transparent and overseen by both Democrats and Republicans.

“In order to conduct widespread election fraud, you would have to convince dozens and dozens of people to all commit felonies,” LaRose said. “Not only would you have to convince these people to commit a felony, but roughly half of them would be committing that felony against the (political) party they were sworn to represent as an elections official. And furthermore, you are expecting these dozens of people to keep this under wraps and never talk about it. And if you know anything about human nature, such a conspiracy would never remain secret.”

LaRose said county political parties nominate their board of elections officials, which would make that kind of betrayal very unlikely.

Further, voting machines go through an audit and a battery of logic and accuracy tests prior to an election to make sure they are tallying votes correctly. The machines are never connected to the internet (it’s a felony if they are), and they are stored in a locked room that requires two keys – one held by a Democrat and one by a Republican – to open.

The voting machines not only have tamper evidence seals on them, but the software used in the machines is designed in such a way that any tampering would be self-evident, LaRose said. Add to that a paper trail for every vote in Ohio so nothing is purely electronic, and you’ve got a pretty secure system that should give voters confidence that every legal ballot is counted.

“Sign up to be a poll worker if you have concerns,” LaRose said. “It will quickly disabuse you of all those ideas once you see all of the safeguards in place. Nothing is impossible, but it is nearly inconceivable for any kind of widespread systemic voter fraud to occur.”

In other words, this fantasy about fraud that Trump is peddling is more dubious than those grainy black-and-white photos of the Loch Ness monster in the supermarket tabloids.  

Opinion and Engagement Editor Kevin S. Aldridge can be reached at kaldridge@enquirer.com. Twitter: @kevaldrid.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Cincinnati Enquirer can be found here ***