Now that Arizona has gone through their painful recount, and the results still stand, let's separate Fact from Fiction in an attempt to get to the heart of the problem.
You haven't asked me yet, but let me answer these questions for you before I get started
Does Election Fraud Exist?
YES.
Does that Mean the Election was Stolen?
NO.
Were there elections anywhere that could have been influenced by Voter Fraud?
ABSOLUTELY.
Let Me Dive Further......
1. Voter Fraud is POSSIBLE? - YES, of Course it is!
Let's go ahead and answer the most obvious question we can in a very short and simple way. Yes. Voter Fraud is possible. It is also a crime with very serious consequences. Our government believes voter fraud can happen, and they even spend money testing whether or not it is possible.
“DOI investigators posing as a number of those ineligible or deceased individuals, were permitted to obtain, mark, and submit ballots in the scanners or in the lever voting booths in 61 cases, with no challenge or question by BOE poll workers. Investigators were turned away in 2 other cases. No votes were cast for any actual candidate or on any proposal during the course of the DOI operation. Based on the findings from this investigation, DOI makes more than 40 recommendations for changes to policies and procedures at BOE that can be addressed without a change in the law.”
-New York City Department of Investigation, 2013
As you can see, you don't need to take my word for it, or Donald Trump's for that matter. You can take, in this instance, The State of New York's, The Department of Justice's, or most any state in the union. So yes, Voter Fraud is Possible.
2. Does Voter Fraud Exist? - Of course it does.
In 2020, we saw Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over seven million votes, and by more than 10,000 in each of the states he won. On one hand, that is a lot of votes to fake. On the other hand, it would be silly to think the final numbers were 100% accurate. That's because election mistakes get made, and loopholes allow for various forms of fraud in every single election. Honestly, it's impossible to avoid mistakes when counting ballots.
However, as it turns out, voter fraud hasn't been just alleged, it's been proven and prosecuted. Voter Fraud comes in all types of convictions like Fraudulent Use of Absentee Ballots, Buying Votes, False Registrations, Duplicate Voting, and even a prosecution last year in Pennsylvania for.......Altering the Vote Count!
“A former Judge of Elections has been convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia.......During his guilty plea hearing, Demuro admitted that while serving as an elected municipal Judge of Elections, he accepted bribes in the form of money and other things of value in exchange for adding ballots to increase the vote totals for certain candidates on the voting machines in his jurisdiction and for certifying tallies of all the ballots, including the fraudulent ballots.”
-The United States Department of Justice
So yeah, we know that voter fraud has happened, all over the country, in various forms. It's been prosecuted, people have been convicted. Voter Fraud is not just a theory or a claim, it is in fact, very real. Voter Fraud exists.
3. If Voter Fraud is Possible, is it Probable? - YES.
Here is why I say yes. While it only takes one incident to prove voter fraud is possible, we have a lot more than one case with a criminal conviction for voter fraud.
Did you know that in every year over the past decade there have been multiple criminal convictions, in multiple states, for various types of voter fraud? I'm not just talking about claims or allegations, I'm talking about actual criminal convictions! In fact, the Heritage Foundation (Yes, I am aware it's a Conservative Policy Group) has tracked 1,145 confirmed convictions for voter fraud on their website.
So here's what we know. There have been multiple voter fraud cases prosecuted, in multiple states, in every single year over the past decade. If every single year multiple cases of voter fraud are being convicted, and in multiple states, what gives us any reason to think it won't happen again this year? I mean, if you were a betting man, based on the last decade, where would you put your chips? You might even call voter fraud inevitable, but at the very least, it is more than fair to say that voter fraud is not only possible, it is indeed probable!
4. Does Voter Fraud have to potential to change the outcome of an election somewhere, anywhere? -YES!
“As a result [of the discrepancies], I cannot certify that the vote is an accurate representation of the will of the voters in that district. In my professional opinion as an election official, it raises a reasonable doubt as to the outcome of the election.”
-Joe Gloria, Clark County Nevada Voter Registrar
Wow. That's not a conservative commentator...it's not Trump....not the RNC. Nope, it's actually the Voter Registrar of one of the biggest counties in the entire United States. He's talking about the "results" of a Countywide election where a Democrat beat a Republican by.....wait for it....15 votes. And in his opinion as an election official (of one of the largest counties in the United States) that count raised "reasonable doubt as to the outcome of the election."
Clark County has over one million registered voters, and over 974,000 of them cast ballots. Over 150,000 of those ballots were cast in that County Commission race. If voter fraud is possible, and also probable, then isn't it reasonable to wonder if it also has the potential to affect the outcome of a race by a hundredth of one percent....which would be the number in the race that Joe Gloria was referring to?
In other words, sometimes it take a lot less than we'd think to affect the outcome of an actual election. To be fair, I, nor is Gloria, saying that there indeed was fraud in that election. However, IF there had been fraud, it's more than reasonable to think it could have affected this race, and a lot of others. 15 cases of individual voter fraud out of over 150,000 ballots would have affected the outcome of that election.
5. Did Fraud Put Biden in the White House?
“FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress on Thursday that the agency has not historically seen “any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election.” Wray said that while the FBI has seen voter fraud at the local level “from time to time,” undertaking any kind of fraudulent effort that could change the outcome of a federal election “would be a major challenge for an adversary,” and the FBI remains “vigilant” about investigating any potential election threats."
-Forbes Magazine, 9/20/2020
While we have examples of voter fraud and criminal prosecutions for it, these, with the exception of fraud relating to the registration of voters, have all been for "individual voter fraud" convictions. In terms of "widespread coordinated voter fraud," which is what would be needed to actually steal a Presidential election, we simply don't have a puppeteer to point to. You may not agree with the FBI, but do notice that they, and our government, are differentiating between "widespread coordinated voter fraud" and "individual voter fraud." There is a difference, and it is a big one.
You might be surprised to hear me say this after I just outlined how fraud is not only possible, but probable. As I talked about in the above point, fraud can potentially change an outcome, and in the case I mentioned earlier in Philadelphia, we have a local official doing just that, changing the outcome by altering the vote count.
But here's the difference. Those are all local elections with smaller vote counts where a few instances of fraud can definitely change the outcome. But on a National level? You'd have to pay off officials in at least seven states and a hundred counties to do the same thing the official in Philadelphia did. You'd also have to somehow coordinate all of that without anyone knowing.
Friends, how would you even begin to coordinate such a thing? Ask yourselves that. Tampering in one state? Maybe. Tampering in one county? Sure. But that is a lot of ground to cover and one heck of a master plan to manipulate. That's the easy version. And let's not forget, Donald Trump was in the White House for this one. If he is the most powerful man in the country, then who could be powerful enough to pull of such a heist? Republican Governors and Secretaries of State would have to be in on it, working with a mater Democrat plan that somehow avoided detection from the most powerful office in the country, the White House itself. You have to see how ridiculous this sounds.
Look, we just don't have a henchman, a master plan, or a Montgomery C Burns here. We have lots of individuals faking votes, we have local unions harvesting votes, and we have organizations registering fake voters. But when it comes to the coordinated part? No one has ever even pointed to an actual culprit. They say the election was stolen, but the "who" is not named, and the "how" is not proposed. Instead, it's terminology like stolen or fraud, and unfortunately, nothing more than allegations.
“Allegations of Voter Fraud Are Not Equivalent to Evidence of Voter Fraud, Nor Do Public Concerns About Voter Fraud Constitute Evidence that Fraud Occurred."
-The Supreme Court of the United States
As the Supreme Court ruled, Allegations are Not Evidence. So when Mike Lindell, the My Pillow Guy, and others go around the country claiming voter fraud but present no hard evidence, it doesn't help. You can't scream stolen election and not present an actual culprit. The fact that cases of voter fraud exist does not constitute evidence of a master plan to steal an election.
Until someone, somewhere, actual presents some kind of evidence, the claims that the 2020 election was stolen will only hurt the Republican party moving forward. Someone somewhere needs to show more than fraud being possible or occurring (again, our government agrees with you on those points), they need to show actual coordination and have a culprit.
6. Bonus Question- How Should Republicans Address Voter Fraud?
With Evidence.
Ok, that was too easy of an answer, so I'll build it out slightly. They need to ask themselves a simple question. Do I care about voter fraud existing, or do I only care if it may have affected a race I actually care about? And this is my BIG problem with screaming stolen election.
Remember the Clark County Commission race I mentioned? It was certified in the end, despite a challenge from the losing candidate. Instead of screaming an election was stolen from Trump, who "lost" by over 30,000 votes, how about concentrating on the race that voter fraud actually might have affected? How about some outrage for the guy who lost by 14 votes as opposed to the one who lost over 30,000?
Look, if you can prove that voter fraud changed the outcome of that County Commission race, then you have a lot of credibility the next time you want to claim an election was stolen. So start small. Prove your theory. And don't just do it when it's convenient for you, or when you don't like one outcome. Voter Fraud is possible, Voter Fraud exists, and Voter Fraud is Probable. So instead of crying foul, let's get to work on providing evidence and proving that voter fraud is actually out there changing the outcomes of our elections.
In order to prove and eliminate voter fraud, you have to start small, and care as much about Voter Fraud itself, as you do about Trump.
Follow Up Questions.
I want to note that people do have a lot of questions on the how and the why of the 2020 election, and I have done my best to answer those in various posts. So here are some helpful links that might help answer some of your basic questions.
One other thing I want to note not mentioned in my post above is that in my own polling, the election numbers lined up. I pegged Trump's close loss here in Nevada, and his struggles in other swing states. The final number matched my own polling. The only surprise to me was Arizona, where I thought he'd pull it out by a slim margin. Otherwise, I had him losing those key Midwestern States, and taking back Virginia, which was enough for Biden to win. So, when I look at this election historically, it makes complete sense. And when I compare the final results to my own internal polling, it matches up near perfect. So if this election was stolen by someone, they also somehow managed to juke my polls. Take that all with a grain of salt.