Wall Street Journal: Latest stolen election conspiracy theory ‘nonsense’
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal is dismissing a conspiracy theory about 2020 election integrity in Georgia that has gained more traction among Republicans in recent days.
“The nation’s MAGA minds are still looking back at 2020 and stretching to justify President Trump’s delusion of a stolen election,” the Journal wrote in an editorial published Sunday. “The latest involves the embarrassing news that Fulton County, Ga., failed to have its poll workers sign many of the tabulator tapes for early voting.”
The newspaper conceded that “unsigned tabulator tapes are a problem,” calling the mistake in Georgia “widespread during early voting in Fulton County” enough to indicate the municipality’s election office “deserved an overhaul.”
“Yet an error by poll workers isn’t a reason to throw out tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by Georgians who did nothing wrong,” the newspaper continued, noting the issue is “getting more attention than it deserves because Mr. [Brad] Raffensperger is running for Governor, and his GOP primary opponents are using the Fulton County mistake against him.”
Georgia is one of the states President Trump and his allies argued was swung by fraudulent votes in favor of former President Biden in 2020, a claim that has been debunked by a number of local courts and election officials, including Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.
Trump continues to argue the 2020 election was not conducted fairly, and he has vowed to implement election reforms during his second term.
“Elections are supposed to run by the book, and Fulton County’s blunder is bad for public confidence,” the Journal wrote. “Yet so are Mr. Trump’s constantly shifting claims that the 2020 election was stolen, with every irregularity claimed as supposedly proving history’s biggest fraud.”
Trump, the Journal wrote, will likely “never admit his 2020 claims were partisan nonsense.”
“But Republicans who care about the future could do their man a favor by refusing to keep indulging them,” it said.
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