These Are The Voter Fraud Claims Trump Tried (And Failed) To Overturn The Election With
Topline
With the Electoral College officially ratifying a win for Joe Biden this week and even President Trump’s closest allies beginning to recognize he lost, here’s a look at the key voter fraud conspiracy theories Trump and his team tried—and failed—to use to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
People participate in the “Million MAGA March” from Freedom Plaza to the Supreme Court, on November … [+]
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Key Facts
That the country’s voting machinery, run by Dominion Voting Systems, was manipulated to delete millions of votes for Trump, flip votes for Biden and has links to Venezuela and its dead former president Hugo Chavez, a series of claims that have been debunked by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), which says on its “Rumor Control” page that there is no evidence any voting systems were compromised, and by Dominion, which has insisted that it has no link to Venezuela.
That dead people were able to vote, particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, a claim that officials in the targeted states have labeled unfounded and that judges have also turned away when raised in court.
That Republican poll watchers were not allowed to monitor votes being counted in “Democrat-run cities, in key states all across the nation,” as alleged by Trump in a Dec. 2 video about election fraud, a claim that—focused specifically on Pennsylvania in the litigation launched by his team in court—has been debunked by local officials and video evidence of the count online, and was eventually removed from the Trump campaign’s lawsuit.
That election officials in Nevada’s Democratic-leaning Clark County deliberately manipulated machines used to verify signatures to allow ballots that normally wouldn’t pass muster, a claim that a judge found no evidence to support after a nine-hour evidentiary hearing.
That large amounts of votes for Biden were “dumped” after in-person ballots were counted on election night, a claim that includes no actual allegations of corruption and instead describes the legitimate tallying of mail-in ballots, which typically takes longer because of verification methods.
Key Background
Ultimately, none of these claims—or the countless other allegations floated by Trump and his allies over the past month—had any impact on the election’s results. A Washington Post review found that at least 86 judges from across the political spectrum (some appointed by Trump) rejected at least one post-election lawsuit filed by the president or his supporters, while vote recounts requested by the Trump team in Wisconsin and Georgia made no difference. The only consequence of these election challenges, allege a growing number of critics from both parties, is an unnecessary and unfounded public distrust in one of the country’s core democratic institutions.
Further Reading
“Trump And The GOP Have Now Lost More Than 50 Post-Election Lawsuits” (Forbes)
“Detroit Is Trying To Punish Sidney Powell For Kraken Lawsuit—Legal Experts Say It Could Work” (Forbes)
“Biden Secures Electoral College Victory After Unprecedented Attempt By Trump To Invalidate Vote” (Forbes)
“Election results under attack: Here are the facts” (The Washington Post)
*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Forbes can be found here ***
