On Jan 7, Washington Post analyst Philip Bump examined Trump’s 37-page dossier of evidence supposedly proving the legitimacy of questions about the 2020 election. As Bump concludes, this evidence is either false or unrelated to any fraud claims.
Fruitless effort
“Over the three-plus years since the election,” Bump explains, “no evidence of any schemes that affected the vote has been uncovered — despite the enormous effort from Trump and his allies to uncover some.”
Widespread understanding
A number of Trump’s lawsuits alleging election fraud have been thrown out by the courts. On Jan 5, the “expert who was hired by the Trump campaign” to find evidence of election fraud publicly stated that he and his team “found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election.”
New Attempt
On Jan 6, Trump’s legal team submitted a 37-page document intended to support the former president’s presidential immunity claim. However, as Bump explains, the document utterly fails to provide legitimate evidence of voter fraud “since it can’t.”
Number of voters
One claim made by Trump’s legal team is that more people voted in Michigan than were registered to vote. While Trump’s team claims there were about 5.5 million voters included in the state’s “qualified voter file” in April 2021, the secretary of state reported that there were more than 8 million registered voters in November 2020.
Cherry-picking
Trump’s team selected a number of findings from a report made by the Republican-controlled Michigan state Senate. What the former president’s team failed to mention, however, is the fact that the report states that “this Committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan’s prosecution of the 2020 election.”
So-called mules
In the document, Trump’s legal team repeated false claims from the film “2000 Mules,” which Bump notes has been “robustly debunked” by scores of experts. The film argues, without concrete evidence, that malicious actors “trafficked” ballots to undermine the election in Michigan.
Dodgy ballots
Trump’s team questioned the use of absentee ballots in Michigan, noting that the number of rejected ballots decreased in 2020. An AP review concluded that no more than 56 absentee ballots submitted in Michigan could be considered questionable — far less than Biden’s 154,000-vote victory.
Counting issues
Trump’s legal team repeats an often-circulated argument relating to election observers being blocked from viewing the votes being counted. In November 2020, a judge ruled against two poll challengers who made this claim, saying they “did not have a full understanding” of the counting process, and that their “interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
Hot air
The document also raises questions about Michigan votes arriving late in the night. In 2021, the AP concluded that such claims were irrelevant, noting that the state’s 8 pm deadline “was for voters to cast their ballots, not for those ballots to be delivered or counted.”
Inconvenient truth
Much of the document focuses on supposed irregularities in Detroit. However, as Gump notes, Trump performed better in the historically Democratic city than he did in 2016.
Application trouble
Trump’s team raised the question of people submitting invalid voter registration applications. However, upon investigating, Michigan officials concluded that no votes were successfully cast as a result of such applications.
Not the point
As Bump notes, whether or not Trump’s evidence is valid or relevant is beside the point. The former president wants “to convey a sense of wrongdoing” in order to motivate and agitate his base.
Successful tactic
In May 2023, about 60% of Republican voters told CNN that they thought Biden didn’t win the 2020 election legitimately. More than half of that number claimed there was solid evidence backing their belief, despite that evidence not actually existing.
Bad sign
On Jan 7, USA Today published a new poll conducted by Suffolk University, which found that “more than half of Donald Trump supporters (52%) said they lacked confidence that ballots will be accurately tallied, an indication that unsubstantiated claims of a rigged 2020 election may carry forward with Trump voters in the coming November 2024 election.”
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