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Election 2020

According to Trump, Nearly Everyone Is Conspiring To Deny Him His Rightful Victory

The nefarious scheme evidently includes Republican officials and Trump-friendly news outlets.

Jacob Sullum | 11.8.2020 4:50 PM

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The vast conspiracy that Donald Trump says delivered the presidential election to Joe Biden gets broader with each passing day. It now includes not just a cabal of pollsters, mainstream media outlets, and corrupt Democrats but also Republican officials and Trump-friendly new organizations.

The president's assertion that the election was "stolen" posits massive, orchestrated fraud. But one study after another has found that voting fraud is very rare, and there is no evidence this year is an exception.

In Nevada, for example, Biden won by about 31,000 votes, according to unofficial results. The CBS station in Las Vegas says Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, "reports there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud."

In Georgia, where Biden is currently leading by about 10,000 votes, the election system is run by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a former Republican state legislator who was endorsed by Trump when he ran for his current position. Last week the president nevertheless claimed "the election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats."

On Friday, Raffensperger rejected insinuations that the state's vote counting system is corrupt. "The stakes are high and emotions are high on all sides," he told reporters. "We will not let that debate distract us from our work. We will get it right….We're committed to doing everything we can to maintain trust in our electoral process. If somebody has a credible complaint and some evidence, they can give our office a call." Gabriel Sterling, voting systems manager at Raffensperger's office, said election officials had not seen any "widespread irregularities."

Biden beat Trump by about 41,000 votes in Pennsylvania, which clinched his victory by delivering 20 Electoral College votes. Pennsylvania's secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, is a Democrat. But Fox News correspondent Brian Llenas reports "there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania." He adds: "The American people deserve to see fact based evidence to support these claims of voter fraud. Especially at the levels being alleged. There is no evidence of it in PA at the levels being claimed. Thankfully there are courts that will [distinguish] fact from opinions on this matter."

"Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be?" Trump wondered on Twitter today. Yet Fox, once Trump's favorite news source, joined other major outlets this weekend in declaring Biden the winner of the presidential election.

Sen. Patrick Toomey (R–Pa.) likewise is not buying Trump's claims about fraud in Pennsylvania. "The president's allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated," he told NBC News on Friday. "I'm not aware of any significant wrongdoing here."

The New York Post, which no one would mistake for a pro-Biden newspaper, last week called Trump's allegations "baseless" in the headline of a news report. Today the Post noted that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Trump himself, and "others within the president's orbit" have "repeatedly made allegations of widespread and organized fraud since Election Day, but have not provided hard evidence to back up the claim."

"I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!" Trump insisted yesterday. Nearly everyone, it seems, is conspiring to deny that reality.

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NEXT: Peter Navarro's No-Good Economic Nationalism 

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason. He is the author, most recently, of Beyond Control: Drug Prohibition, Gun Regulation, and the Search for Sensible Alternatives (Prometheus Books).

Election 2020Donald TrumpJoe BidenVotingFraudCorruptionConspiracy TheoriesJournalism
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