The Big Lie

Outline

  1. Trump’s Big Lie
  2. Three Key Facts About the Big Lie
  3. A Big Lie
  4. Most Republicans still believe the Big Lie
  5. Legitimacy of Biden’s Victory
  6. People Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie
  7. Demographics of True Believers
  8. What Republican Politicians say about the Big Lie
  9. Trump’s Earlier Claims of Election Fraud
  10. Disinformation
  11. Hitler’s Big Lie The Stab-in-the-back Conspiracy
  12. Legitimacy of Biden’s Win: the Arguments, Evidence, and Claims

Trump’s Big Lie

That Biden was not legitimately elected president

Three Key Facts About the Big Lie

  1. It’s beyond a reasonable doubt, based on the evidence, that Biden was legitimately elected president.
  2. The Big Lie makes a serious accusation: that the Democratic Party undermined a bedrock of democracy to win an election — the institution of free and fair elections.
  3. Millions of Americans, including most Republicans, still believe the Big Lie.

A Big Lie

  • A Big Lie is a falsehood so outrageous that people believe it’s got to be true because it’s hard to believe anyone would tell a lie of such magnitude.
  • Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf
    • “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

Most Republicans still believe the Big Lie

  • Cross-Tabs: Late October 2024 Times/Siena Poll of the Likely Electorate NY Times
    • Which candidate do you think was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election?
      • Donald Trump
        • Democrat 3%
        • Republican 58%
        • Independent 17%
      • Joe Biden
        • Democrat 96%
        • Republican 30%
        • Independent 75%
  • The head of the GOP is still elevating 2020 election skepticism Philip Bump WaPo July 2023

Legitimacy of Biden’s Victory

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

  • The evidence is overwhelming that Biden was legitimately elected president, making it beyond a reasonable doubt that his victory was legitimate.
  • The legitimacy of Biden’s win is not an open question.  It’s not a matter of opinion.  It’s a fact established by overwhelming evidence.
  • A logical consequence of the legitimacy of Biden’s win is that anyone who says or believes otherwise is wrong.
    • 58 percent of Republicans say Biden won the 2020 election due to fraud, as of October 2024.
      • Late October 2024 Times/Siena Poll of the Likely Electorate NY Times
    • Therefore 58 percent of Republicans are wrong about Biden’s victory.

Assessing the Arguments, Evidence, and Claims

  • Assessing whether Biden was legitimately elected president means evaluating the arguments, evidence, and claims for and against two hypotheses:
    • that Biden won the election legitimately
    • that Biden won the election only through fraud

View The Arguments, Evidence, and Claims in Detail

People Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie

  • Why They Believe
    • Kyle
      • I guess the actual amount of votes that he got at the end of the night, there was no way. I was listening there thinking, ‘How in the hell did Joe Biden get 81 million votes and never even held a rally with more than 20 or 30 people there?’ Didn’t really speak to anybody. Didn’t go out in public. Here’s Donald Trump going to these rallies and tens of thousands of people there and all of the enthusiasm was there, but I just couldn’t figure out how in the world that happened.
    • Candace
      • You see the graph, the line, it’s a line graph, they go up, Trump’s ahead, Biden’s staying whatever, 50,000 votes below him. Steady, steady, steady, steady, steady all the way up, and then three o’clock in the morning when they stopped counting right after they started again, I can’t remember how many hours it was, they – Oh, there’s a big jump in the Biden numbers. And now all of a sudden, the graph, it just went up on the Biden line. So all of a sudden, the Biden numbers, ‘Oh my God, Biden’s ahead 15,000 now.’ In that one moment.
    • Frank
      • It just seemed like there was just tons of examples of just irregularities that took place and just unlike any other election I’ve seen. There just seemed to be a lot of examples that you can point to where it’s just like, ‘Wow, yeah. That doesn’t seem right. That’s odd.’ Everything from the water main break that happened in Atlanta to the counting stopping in Pennsylvania and then they restarted it, and all of a sudden they picked up enough to win. And then also it seemed like there were a lot of people that were willing to come forward and give sworn affidavits, ‘Hey, trucks were coming in and I’d never seen this before and going out.’ And I mean, it just seemed like there were a lot of people that were willing to come forward and report some of the irregularities that they saw.
    • Paris
      • It just seems like there were so many things with this election. Thousands of ballots found in the garbage or ballots being burned or poll workers not being able to enter polling stations for whatever reason, those kind of things. And listen, I mean, if there were a hundred stories, which there was probably more, it just seemed like to me that anytime something like that came out about the election in regard to it being rigged or being fraudulent, they always had an answer for something and they always had an answer for it. And I think to myself, what’s the probability of say, and I know I’m just using a number, what’s the probability of a hundred instances of voter fraud, or a rigged election in any way? A hundred instances and you’re telling me that every single one checked out? You have an explanation for every single one? I find that very, very hard to believe.
  • Trump Supporters Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie Sarah Longwell Atlantic
    • [Sarah Longwell is the executive director of the Republican Accountability Project, publisher of The Bulwark, and host of the Focus Group podcast.]
    • I regularly host focus groups to better understand how voters are thinking about key political topics. Recently, I decided to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.
      • As a woman from Wisconsin told me, “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.” A man from Pennsylvania said, “Something about it just didn’t seem right.” A man from Arizona said, “It didn’t smell right.”
      • A man from North Carolina, when asked why he thought the election was stolen, said, “There was 10 million more votes for Trump in this last election than he got in 2016. You’re telling me that [Joe] Biden got that many?”
      • Another man from North Carolina said, “I personally went to Trump rallies that were filling stadiums, and then Biden can’t even fill a freaking library. Like, no, it’s not true. I don’t believe it. Don’t buy it.”
      • A woman from Georgia told me, “When I went to bed, Trump was so in the lead and then [I got] up and he’s not in the lead. I mean, that’s crazy.”
      • A woman from Arizona told me, “I think what convinced me more that the election was fixed was how vehemently they have said it wasn’t.”
    • These voters aren’t bad or unintelligent people. The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life. They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets—and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.
    • If I’ve learned anything from my focus groups, it’s that something doesn’t have to make sense for voters to believe it’s true.

Demographics of True Believers

  • Trump True Believers Have Their Reasons, Thomas Edsall NY Times Oct 2021
    • Just who believes the claim that Donald Trump won in 2020 and that the election was stolen from him?
    • Three sources provided The Times with survey data:
    • With minor exceptions, the data from all three polls is similar.
    • Alexander Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, summed it up:
      • About 35 percent of Americans believed in April that Biden’s victory was illegitimate, with another 6 percent saying they are not sure. What can we say about the Americans who do not think Biden’s victory was legitimate? Compared to the overall voting-age population, they are disproportionately
        • white
        • Republican
        • older
        • less educated
        • more conservative
        • more religious (particularly more Protestant and more likely to describe themselves as born again).
    • P.R.R.I. also tested agreement or disagreement with a view that drives replacement theory, that:
      • “Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background”
    • They found that 60 percent of Republicans agreed, as do 55 percent of conservatives.
    • The Reuters/Ipsos data showed that
      • 69 percent of white Republicans without college degrees agreed “that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,”
      • 51 percent of white Republicans with college degrees agreed, and
      • the level of this belief remained consistently strong (over 60 percent) among Republicans of all ages living in rural, suburban or urban areas.

What Republican Politicians say about the Big Lie

  • Some Republican politicians, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, say outright that the election was stolen.
  • Others hedge their remarks, saying things like:
    • There were many election irregularities and questions that need to be addressed
    • People have a lot of doubts about the integrity of the election and those doubts need to be allayed.
    • Yeah, Biden’s president.
    • Crickets
  • From the Vice Presidential Debate:
    • Walz: Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?
    • Vance: Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?
    • Walz: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.
  • This Week with George Stephanopoulos, aired Sunday, October 5, 2024 ABC News
    • Interview with Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House
      • STEPHANOPOULOS: “Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump lost?”
      • JOHNSON: “See, this is the game that is always played by mainstream media with leading Republicans. It’s — it’s a gotcha game. You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future. We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020. We’re going to talk about 2024 and how we’re going to solve the problems for the American people.”
  • Only a few Republican politicians have spoken the truth as bluntly as Liz Cheney:
    • “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system,” USA Today
  • Republicans’ conflicting message: Embracing Trump election lie is key to prominence, just stop asking us about it WaPo
    • Geoff Kabaservice, who chronicled the transformation of the GOP in his 2012 book, “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party,” said of Republican party members that:
      • “These people are afraid of their base. They know that if they actually come out and forthrightly tell these 70 percent of Republicans who believe Joe Biden did not legitimately win the election, that the base will turn against them, that they’ll end up with a primary challenge, Trump himself will get involved and they’ll lose and they’ll be out of politics.”

Trump’s Earlier Claims of Election Fraud

  • 2016 Primary
    • Ted Cruz in Iowa
      • “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!” WaPo
  • 2016 General Election
    • New Hampshire
      • The president claimed that he would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the “thousands” of people who were “brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to “illegally” vote in New Hampshire. Politico
    • Popular Vote
      • “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” WaPo
      • Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Wikipedia
  • 2020 Before the Election
    • From Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (August 2020).
      • “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

Disinformation

  • Disinformation is dangerous
    • “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” — Voltaire
  • Disinformation works
    • It can lead people to do what they otherwise would not do, attack the US Capitol.
  • View Disinformation
  • A Threat to Our Democracy: Election Subversion in the 2021 Legislative Session, September 29, 2021 Voting Rights Lab (The Voting Rights Lab is a nonpartisan organization that brings state advocacy, policy, and legislative expertise to the fight for voting rights.)
    • Election subversion bills have either been enacted or seen significant momentum in key battleground states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, and others. Taken together, these actions – legislative and otherwise – threaten to inject partisanship where it never belongs: into our election systems themselves. This dangerous crop of legislation has driven toward several alarming outcomes:
      • Increased Partisanship in Election Administration
      • Partisan Election Reviews
      • Criminalization of Election Officials & Civil Causes of Action

Hitler’s Big Lie
The Stab-in-the-back Conspiracy

  • From How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany, Christopher R. Browning Atlantic:
    • “The short-lived Weimar Republic—which spanned the years after Germany’s defeat in World War I until 1933, when Hitler came to power—has become a paradigmatic example of democratic collapse.
    • During its first four years, Weimar was under constant attack—above all, from the Big Lie that the republic was a totally illegitimate government because it owed its genesis to a “stab in the back” delivered on the home front. According to this Big Lie, the German army had not been defeated on the battlefield in 1918—when in fact General Erich Ludendorff’s spring offensive was a gamble that ended in military disaster. Instead, the myth went, a cabal of “November criminals”—Jews, Marxists, democrats, and internationalists—had betrayed the country, subverted the war effort, driven out the kaiser, signed the shameful Treaty of Versailles, and imposed an un-German democracy.
    • Two factors distinguished Hitler from the rest of the German right. First was his self-awareness and cool calculation in deploying the Big Lie. In Mein Kampf, published in 1925–26, he explained that “the masses … more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one,” and that even a propaganda claim “so impudent that people thought it insane” could ultimately prevail. Essential to the “stab in the back” conspiracy theory’s effectiveness were a simple appeal to the emotions, not the intellect, and its endless repetition without concession to contrary evidence. Commitment to the Big Lie, he realized, had to be total and uncompromising.
    • The second factor was Hitler’s decision to make the conspiracy theory the justification for violent action, moving rapidly from merely denigrating Weimar democracy to staging an outright insurrection. In November 1923, he instigated the Beer Hall Putsch, an attempted local coup d’état in the Bavarian capital of Munich.”

Legitimacy of Biden’s Win: the Arguments, Evidence, and Claims

Contents

  1. Arguments, Evidence, and Claims
    1. Claims made in support of the contention that Biden “won” the 2020 election only by fraud
    2. Evidence that Biden legitimately won the 2020 election
  2. Links
    1. Recounts, Audits, Assessments, Investigations
      1. Results of recounts, audits, and independent investigations
      2. William Barr’s Assessment
      3. Christopher Wray’s Assessment
      4. Christopher Krebs’ Assessment
      5. Lost, Not Stolen
      6. Fewer than 500 potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states
      7. Only a handful of election fraud charges made by State Attorneys General
      8. No Fraud Found by Investigations Commissioned by Trump Campaign
    2. Debunked Fraud Claims
      1. 60 Failed Election Lawsuits
      2. Fact-Checks of Fraud Claims
    3. Failed Argument that there were problems with the election
  3. Other Arguments
    1. Trump’s Earlier Baseless Claims of Election Fraud
    2. Ockham’s Razor

Arguments, Evidence, and Claims

  • An argument is a piece of reasoning from premises to a conclusion, typically set forth to establish that its conclusion is true
  • Evidence is an established fact that makes a hypothesis more (or less) probable than it would be otherwise
  • A claim is a proposition alleged to be true.
Claims made in support of the contention that Biden “won” the 2020 election only by fraud
  1. Dominion Voting Systems switched “thousands of votes” from Trump to Biden, for example 6,000 in one Michigan County.
  2. 1.8 million ballots were mailed out in Pennsylvania, but 2.5 million were returned.
  3. 20,000 dead people voted in Pennsylvania, 17,000 in Michigan, and 5,000 in Georgia.
  4. 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia.
  5. In Detroit there were more votes than voters.
  6. There are hundreds of sworn affidavits by eyewitness that election fraud occurred.
  7. 2000 Mules proves that 2,000 cell phone users were acting as “mules” in a massive, nationwide scheme in which they were paid to illegally “traffic” fraudulent ballots. 
  8. In Michigan, early in the morning after Election Day, “a vote dump of 149,772 votes came in unexpectedly.”
  9. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions.
  10. In one state mail-in ballot envelopes were destroyed, preventing signature matching.
  11. There were historically low absentee ballot rejection rates.
  12. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards went missing.
  13. It’s “statistically impossible” that Trump lost the presidential race while Republicans had success in congressional races
  14. Some mail-in ballots were in pristine condition without creases, indicating they had not been mailed in envelopes.
  15. Thousands of uncounted ballots, mostly for Trump, were discovered in Floyd, Fayette, and Walton counties in Georgia weeks after the election.
  16. Surveillance camera footage captured election workers in Georgia adding thousands of illegal ballots that were brought into an Atlanta facility in suspicious suitcases on election night.
  17. In Fayette County, Pennsylvania, multiple voters received ballots that were already filled out.
  18. Biden could not have received more votes from Black voters than Barack Obama did.
  19. There were numerous statistical anomalies, all in Biden’s favor.
  20. Trump won on Election Night
  21. In some states Republicans weren’t allowed to have poll watchers.
  22. Election workers entered “fake birth dates into the system, in order to illegally count” ballots.
  23. A picture shows ballots being secretly delivered late at night at the Detroit vote-counting center.
  24. The percentage of ballots rejected in Georgia was suspiciously low.
  25. In Pennsylvania, Democrats were allowed to cure their ballots but Republicans were not.
  26. In Arizona, in-person voters whose ballots produced error messages from tabulation machines were told to press a button that resulted in their votes not being counted.
  27. It is highly unlikely that Trump lost the election since his vote count was higher than his vote count in 2016
  28. Military ballots for Trump were found in a river.
  29. There were thousands of underage voters who illegally voted in Georgia.
  30. 36,000 “illegal aliens” voted in Arizona.
Evidence that Biden legitimately won the 2020 election
  1. Certified election results
  2. Results of recounts, audits, and independent investigations
  3. Assessments by Republican officials such as William Barr, Christoper Wray, and Christoper Krebs
  4. Results of Republican investigations
  5. Fewer than 500 potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states
  6. Only a handful of election fraud charges made by State Attorneys General
  7. Debunked claims of election fraud
    • 60 Failed election lawsuits
    • Numerous fact-checks of fraud claims
Recounts, Audits, Assessments, Investigations
Results of recounts, audits, and independent investigations
  • Vote Recounts and Election Contests in Battleground States Stanford-MIT
  • Arizona Recount Of 2020 Election Ballots Found No Proof Of Corruption npr
  • Wisconsin audit finds elections are ‘safe and secure’ AP
  • Audit overwhelmingly confirms Virginia’s election results Virginia Mercury
  • Pa. audit confirms Biden got more votes than Trump, but can’t tell us much else Spotlight
  • More than 250 audits confirm accuracy and integrity of Michigan’s election michigan.gov
William Barr’s Assessment
  • Barr Acknowledges Justice Dept. Has Found No Widespread Voter Fraud, NYT
Christopher Wray’s Assessment
  • Wray confirmed there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud days after Trump lied about it again, BusIn
    • New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker asked Wray if he agreed with then Attorney General William Barr’s announcement last year that the DOJ had not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud in the November election.
    • “I agree with Attorney General Barr,” Wray said.
    • “We are not aware of any widespread evidence of voter fraud, much less that it would have affected the outcome in the presidential election,” he added.
Christopher Krebs’ Assessment
  • Cybersecurity officials say the election was ‘the most secure in American history.’ NYT, Nov 2020
  • Trump fired me for saying this, but I’ll say it again: The election wasn’t rigged, Christopher Krebs, WaPo
    • The secretaries of state in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, as well officials in Wisconsin, all worked overtime to ensure there was a paper trail that could be audited or recounted by hand, independent of any allegedly hacked software or hardware.
  • The Cybersecurity 202: Chris Krebs fiercely defends election while President Trump’s attacks on it get weirder, WaPo
    • Krebs’s bottom line: Such fraud claims fail the smell test because, as of 2020, there are paper records for 95 percent of ballots cast by American voters. And hand counts of those ballots in Georgia, Wisconsin and elsewhere show no significant difference between what was tabulated by machines.
    • “The proof is in the ballots,” he said. “The recounts are consistent with the initial count. To me that’s further evidence, that’s confirmation that the systems used in the 2020 election performed as expected and the American people should have 100 percent confidence in their votes.
    • That’s been a consistent message for Krebs, who has trumpeted the importance of paper ballots and post-election audits as vital protections against election hacking or other malfeasance for more than three years.
Lost, Not Stolen
  • LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election, July 2022 lostnotstolen.org
    • Senator John Danforth
    • Benjamin Ginsberg
    • The Honorable Thomas B. Griffith
    • David Hoppe
    • The Honorable J. Michael Luttig
    • The Honorable Michael W. McConnell
    • The Honorable Theodore B. Olson
    • Senator Gordon H. Smith
Fewer than 500 potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states
  • Far too little vote fraud to tip election to Trump, AP finds apnews
    • An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by former President Donald Trump has found fewer than 475 — a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.
  • Despite Trump’s intense hunt for voter fraud, officials in key states have so far identified just a small number of possible cases, WaPo
Only a handful of election fraud charges made by State Attorneys General
  • If there were massive election fraud we would expect to see criminal charges brought against the perpetrators.
    • Despite GOP rhetoric, there have been fewer than two dozen charged cases of voter fraud since the election, Philip Bump WaPo
      • In fact, a review of local news reports shows there aren’t many examples of even individual voter fraud. By our count, there have been only 16 incidents in which someone has faced criminal charges stemming from their attempt to vote illegally. This includes instances in which it isn’t clear whether a ballot was cast but excludes failed efforts to obtain absentee ballots.
    • AP: Few AZ voter fraud cases, discrediting Trump’s claimsAP
      • Arizona county election officials have identified fewer than 200 cases of potential voter fraud out of more than 3 million ballots cast in last year’s presidential election, further discrediting former President Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election as his allies continue a disputed ballot review in the state’s most populous county.
      • So far, only four cases have led to charges, including those identified in a separate state investigation. No one has been convicted. No person’s vote was counted twice.
  • Florida let them vote. Then DeSantis’s election police arrested them.  WaPo
    • The felons arrested had submitted voter registration applications that were processed by the state — a move that for many amounted to a green light that they were eligible.
No Fraud Found by Investigations Commissioned by Trump Campaign
  • Trump-commissioned report undercut his claims of dead and double voters WaPo
    • The “Project 2020” report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 
  • A second firm hired by Trump campaign found no evidence of election fraud WaPo
    • Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.
    • Block said he recently received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office and met with federal prosecutors in Washington, but he declined to discuss his interactions with them. 
    • Separately, prosecutors have interviewed multiple employees from the Berkeley Research Group in recent weeks, another Trump-paid firm that produced a 29-page report ultimately undermining many of Trump’s fraud claims, according to three people familiar with the matter.
  • Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Voting Machine Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows NYT
Debunked Fraud Claims
60 Failed Election Lawsuits
  • At least 63 lawsuits were filed and lost. Wikipedia
  • The Facts on Trump’s Post-Election Legal Challenges, factcheck.org
  • Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results, WaPo
  • ‘The last wall’: How dozens of judges across the political spectrum rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the election WaPo
  • Supreme Court Rejects Texas Suit Seeking to Subvert Election, NYT
  • Supreme Court dismisses bid led by Texas attorney general to overturn the presidential election results, blocking Trump’s legal path to reverse his loss, WaPo
  • ‘The stuff of which violent insurrections are made:’ Federal judge punishes Colorado lawyers for 2020 election lawsuit, WaPo
  • Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election, Wikipedia
Fact-Checks of Fraud Claims
  • In 2020 the ballots that were counted “were fake ballots.” Politifact
  • Trump Repeats Baseless, False Claims About the Election, factcheck.org
    • Bogus Attacks on Dominion Voting Systems
    • False Claim of Winning Before Votes Were Counted
    • Dead People Voting
    • Poll Watchers and ‘Unexpected’ Ballots
    • Flawed Logic on ‘Just Biden on Top’
    • Trump Ballots Weren’t ‘Thrown Out’
    • Republicans Win with Mail-In Ballots
  • Debunking Trump allies’ latest arguments about fraud in the 2020 election, Philip Bump, WaPo
    • 1.8 million ballots were mailed out in Pennsylvania, but 2.5 million were returned.
    • Biden’s leads in key states are a function of the suspicious addition of large numbers of ballots.
    • It’s inconceivable that Biden received 80 million votes.
    • It can’t be the case that Biden received more votes from Black voters than Barack Obama did.
    • More people were reported to have voted in Detroit than live there.
    • It is suspicious that Trump lost while so many other Republican candidates were successful.
    • Voting machines shifted the results of the election in Biden’s favor.
    • Republicans were prevented from watching votes being tallied, allowing fraud to occur
    • There are hundreds of sworn affidavits proving that fraud occurred.
    • Statistical or historic analysis shows that something strange happened with the voting in various states.
    • Georgia needs to match signatures to ballots for its recount to be valid.
  • Nine Election Fraud Claims, factcheck.org
    • Claim: “Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers.”
    • Claim: “Statistically abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio.”
    • Claim: “Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions.”
    • Claim: “The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail-in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures.”
    • Claim: “Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election.’”
    • Claim: “Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing.”
    • Claim: “Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes.”
    • Claim: “Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law.”
    • Claim: “Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.”
  • Postal Service finds no evidence of mail ballot fraud in Pa. case cited by top Republicans WaPo March 17, 2021
  • Thin Allegations of ‘Dead People’ Voting, factcheck.org, Nov 2020
  • Fact-Checking the Congressional Debate on Ratifying the Election Results, NYT
  • Election results under attack: Here are the facts WaPo Interactive
  • Republicans are still pretending there was election fraud, Jennifer Rubin, WaPo
  • After electoral college backs Biden, Trump continues falsely insisting he won: ‘This Fake Election can no longer stand’, WaPo
  • Inside the Right-Wing Media Bubble, Where the Myth of a Trump Win Lives On, NYT
  • Debunking Trump allies’ latest arguments about fraud in the 2020 election, Philip Bump, WaPo
  • Trump’s ‘Most Important’ Speech Was Mostly False, factcheck.org
  • The most petulant 46 minutes in American history, Philip Bump, WaPo
  • Trump escalates baseless attacks on election with 46-minute video rant, WaPo
  • Trump Repeats Baseless, False Claims About the Election, factcheck.org
  • Fact-checking Trump’s cellphone rant of election falsehoods, WaPo Fact Checker
  • Video Doesn’t Show ‘Suitcases’ of Illegal Ballots in Georgia, factcheck.org
    • Claim: surveillance camera footage captured election workers in Georgia adding thousands of illegal ballots that were brought into an Atlanta facility in suspicious “suitcases” on election night.
    • Trump touts misleading video as ‘proof’ of Georgia voter fraud, WaPo Fact Checker
  • If there is any real evidence of fraud, Mr. President, it’s time to put up, Philip Bump WaPo
    • Things that do not count as evidence of systemic fraud
      • That Biden won more than 80 million votes
      • That there were sudden surges in vote totals that benefited Biden.
      • That other suspicious-seeming things happened but don’t actually show that fraud occurred
      • That hundreds of people signed sworn statements about things they found suspicious.
      • That suspicious-seeming things didn’t happen
      • That isolated examples of fraud occurred.
      • That there exist ways in which fraud could have occurred, even though there isn’t evidence that it did.
      • The above includes allegations about voting machines changing votes without evidence that this occurred
      • That “statistical analysis” suggests that vote totals were weird.
    • Things that do count as evidence of systemic fraud
      • Demonstrated examples of fraud affecting a large number of votes.
  • Michigan Republicans Debunk Voter Fraud Claims in Unsparing Report NYT
  • The most brutal debunking of Trump’s fraud claims yet — from Republicans WaPo
  • Rudy Giuliani’s Bogus Election Fraud Claims factcheck
  • Trump Returns To Campaign Trail With Election Lies And Dark Warnings NPR
  • Trump and the next big, bogus stolen-election claim Blake WaPo
  • 2000 Mules
    • The faulty premise of the ‘2,000 mules’ trailer about voting by mail in the 2020 election Politifact
    • Evidence Gaps in ‘2000 Mules’  factcheck
    • Fact Check: Does ‘2000 Mules’ provide evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election? Reuters
    • ‘2000 Mules’ but No Evidence WSJ Editorial
      • “Four million minutes of tape, and no clear shot of illegality.”
Failed Argument that there were problems with the election
  • An exchange from Chris Wallace’s July 2023 interview with Ronna McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee:
    • McDaniel
      • “Ultimately he [Biden] won the election, but there were lots of problems with the 2020 election. I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that.”
    • Wallace
      • “You’re saying you’re not sure, as the Republican Party chair, that he was the legitimately elected president?”
    • McDaniel
      • “I’m saying there were lots of problems with the 2020 election and we need to fix it going forward.”
      • Sources:
        • The head of the GOP is still elevating 2020 election skepticism Bump wapo
        • Chris Wallace Presses RNC Chair Over 2020 Election: Do You Think Biden Won? yahoo
  • McDaniel’s argument:
    • There were lots of problems with the 2020 election
    • Therefore Biden was not legitimately elected president. (“I don’t think he won it fair.”)
  • But the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise.  There are always problems with elections: language problems, equipment failures, mistakes in voting rolls, ballots filled out incorrectly, people voting in the wrong precinct, problems with IDs, unsigned mail-in ballots, people voting in two states, people voting by mail and in-person  But such problems provide no reason for thinking that Biden won because of fraud. McDaniel’s argument is an instance of jumping to a conclusion.

Other Arguments

Trump’s Earlier Baseless Claims of Election Fraud
  • 2016 Primary
    • Ted Cruz in Iowa
      • “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!” WaPo
  • 2016 General
    • New Hampshire
      • The president claimed that he and Ayotte both would have been victorious in the Granite State if not for the “thousands” of people who were “brought in on buses” from neighboring Massachusetts to “illegally” vote in New Hampshire. Politico
    • Popular Vote
      • “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” WaPo
Ockham’s Razor
  • The hypothesis that the election was stolen is a conspiracy theory. Ockham’s Razor thus provides an a priori reason for rejecting the hypothesis, since the straightforward explanation of the election results is much simpler.