Roughly 1/4 of Americans (50% of conservatives) continue to believe that the 2020 election was nothing but a big cheat; Donald Trump is our true President.

That’s a lot of people.

When the crowd gets that big, you have to wonder if it’s true.

I have a conservative friend who’s a firm believer in this, so I asked him for the best articles that support a stolen election. I had a hard time finding resources on the internet; Google seems to be throttling anything in support of his views.

He and I don’t agree on most political things, but he’s a smart guy, and I respect him. We were in Jr. High band together.

Between his Facebook feed and search results on “alternative” search engines, I ended up studying 10 articles that support a rigged election. There are so many more to consider, so I can’t say that I ended up with a solid understanding of how my pro-Trump friends are feeling right now. But I do have a better grasp and would like to share some thoughts/armchair analyses on why so many continue to believe that Trump is America’s true president.

Mail-In Ballots and the Last Minute Biden Surge

Early into the 2020 election count, as my family and I sat on on our basement couch, biting our nails, Biden was losing. We went to bed completely bummed; it looked like we’d have another 4 years of the worst president I’ve ever seen.

Then, suddenly, poof! Biden won, garnering an unprecedented number of votes.

How could that be?

Foul play?

There are two stories that attempt to explain what happened: one claims that Biden’s last-minute surge is clear evidence of election tampering on many levels, the other claims that liberal voters utilize mail-in ballots more than conservatives.

Story “a” relies heavily on the belief that Trump was a picked-on president, that liberals simply decided to hate him. It was this hate that drove a nationwide, concerted effort to ensure his loss. More specifically, liberals used the Coronavirus to excuse late acceptance of mail-in ballots. Ultimately, the left exploited COVID to further game the system.

There’s evidence to support this.

Story “b” relies heavily on the idea that mail-in ballots are a secure way to vote. Sure, there will always be folks trying to scam the system – on both sides – but according to expert opinion, mail-in voting is not significantly less secure than its in-person counterpart.

Story “b” proponents also point to the idea that election officials count mail-in ballots later than live votes. An election won by the mail-in crowd would conclude later in the process, even more so given pandemic concessions.

Is that true? Should I believe it?

There are two compelling stories here, both sides convinced that their’s is a slam-dunk reality.

Which should I believe?

Dominion Voting Machines

Among other things, pro-Trump conservatives (story “a”) discovered that Dominion’s head of security and product strategy, Eric Coomer, is an extreme left Antifa supporter who posted pro-police-violence content on social media. Dominion didn’t force him to remove his posts or make any apology.

All true.

This side of the story concludes; if Dominion doesn’t care about its upper leadership publicly supporting Antifa and beyond, doesn’t that make Dominion Voting Machines Antifa and beyond?

That’s interesting.

The right keeps complaining about “woke” organizations that fire/censor their employees for posting, for example, racist content. But an organization that doesn’t censor an exec for Antifa content must be pro-Antifa.

Liberals (story “b”) counter that one nutjob executive doesn’t define the entire organization, nor does it offer any strong evidence for a rigged election.

But let’s be real; If Biden had lost the election, and the head of security and product strategy of a leading voting machine company was a sold-out member of the Proud Boys, liberals would make the same accusations.

Story “a” also notes multiple Dominion-related irregularities in multiple counties. This is true as well. These contraptions didn’t function as well as they should have. You don’t have to go far to conclude that bad actors tampered with these machines.

Story “b” references recounts and audits galore, concluding that irregularities happen in every election. No machine functions properly, but investigators found no proof of tampering.

A or B?

There are so many more accusations, arguments and excuses to consider. And rest assured – people cheated!! That’s a proven fact that should disturb all of us.

I offer what’s above as an example of the vast expanse that exists between people who believe the “Biden won, fair and square” story, and those who believe in a rigged election.

Both stories have merit, and some evidence, but because they are so drastically different, only one can be right. As history shows us so often when perspectives are so polarized, there is no middle ground – the truth lies either left or right.

But before we ask which story is real, we should first ask if we’ve fully understood both of them. It’s impossible to have a functional grasp of what’s really happening unless we’ve heard AND understood both sides.

Right now, in this current American moment, that ain’t happening.

There is a fundamental belief that keeps that from happening.

Within the 25% mentioned above, many believe that liberals want nothing more than to destroy America. How can you believe a story spawn from evil itself? Only an evil person would listen. Conservative Christian America has been calling liberal America “evil” for a long time now. 30 years ago, I sat in the pews of a small church in Arkansas, listening to the pastor remind us all that conservatism is God’s politics. Liberals aren’t just the enemy of God, they’re the enemy of America.

Where did my conservative comrades get that idea?

Here’s my guess:

Consider a snippet from one of Donald Trump’s latest speeches:

… Joe Biden and the radical left have brought our nation to the brink of ruin. There’s never been anything like what has happened. After just nine months under Biden, violent criminals and blood-thirsty gangs are taking over our streets, illegal aliens and deadly drug cartels are taking over our borders. Inflation is taking over our economy. China is taking over our jobs. The Taliban has taken over Afghanistan. Lunatic leftists are taking over our schools and radical socialists are taking over our country. And we’re not going to let that happen. 

 

Not “we’ve got some problems at the border,” or, “we’ve got some problems with inflation,” but, “takeover,” “bloodthirsty,” “deadly,” “lunatic,” et al: violent, inflammatory untruths that have only one intent: national division.

Most of Trump’s speeches are available via online transcript, and too many of them contain language like this. I’ve read them. It’s nauseating. Liberals are destroying our country, according to him, and we shouldn’t put up with it.

This is the genesis of election story “a.” Trump uttered words like “rigged!” “stolen!” etc. Because, up to this point, he had garnered so much trust, 70% of his constituency believed him, then went looking for evidence, and found it.

Go figure.

It’s not unlike Christians in the antebellum south who wanted to keep slavery alive and so went looking to justify it in the Bible. They needed their agenda to be a God thing and twisted scripture to make it so. It was only there because they wanted it to be there.

Likewise, Trump said it, it must be true, let’s go find it.

Take Donald Trump out of the equation and the 25% shrinks significantly.

You’ll never hear me comparing Trump to Hitler, but I have no problem comparing the way he talks about liberals to the way Hitler talked about the Jews. Trump is using the same words and ideas, those that his angry countrymen so desperately want to hear, inflaming them to unthinkable heights.

He has no genocidal agenda, He simply wants to win at any cost. But he’s convinced his followers to limit their diet solely to his side of the story and to villify everything else.

The 25% of America that believes story “a” isn’t stupid, they’ve just decided, at a trusted politician’s behest, that anyone who supports story “b” is evil. Only an evil person would give their side of the story a mere ounce of consideration.

No Truth in Half Truth

That’s all problematic of course because story “a” ignores many compelling facts and opinions about the 2020 election. Following are at the top of my list:

It’s true that there were many irregularities and instances of downright fraud in this election.

Election fraud is real.

But it exists in every election, especially if you go looking for it. The deeper you dig, the more you’ll find. From where I sit, I see an unprecedented number of accusations, investigations, lawsuits, etc. Should the resulting number of investigations and proven cases surprise us?

My house is in relatively good shape with a few issues that need attention. If I go over it with a fine-toothed comb, however, I’ll find hundreds of problems.

Did we find a bunch of problems because there were more than ever before, or did we find so many because we dug deeper than we usually do?

Were these irregularities so irregular?

The ones we did find offer no solid proof of foul play. Testimony from election officials in all 50 states (some listed here) agrees. So do folks like Bill Barr, Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, Arkansas GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson, Prominent GOP Layer Ben Ginsburg, and many other Republican leaders, Legal folk, etc.

The National Academy of Sciences chimed in as well:

We have closely examined what we consider the most prominent statistical claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Although the claims are diverse, our conclusion is consistent: For each claim, we find that what is purported to be an anomalous fact about the election result is either not a fact or not anomalous.

In many cases the alleged fact, if shown to withstand scrutiny, would hardly constitute convincing evidence that Biden was elected due to fraud: A modest advantage to Biden in counties that chose to use Dominion machines, for example, could be explained by chance, by factors not accounted for in statistical models, or indeed by pro-Trump fraud undertaken using other voting machines.

As it happens, the allegedly anomalous features we consider appear mundane once properly measured or placed in the appropriate context.

On one hand, I’m disappointed that the US Supreme Court consistently brushed aside Trump’s case. It would’ve been helpful for the highest court in the land to offer their official take on this. On the other hand, the Court sent a clear message that it will not tolerate anyone who pulls a case out of their arsehole with little-to-no compelling evidence.

Many of the 25% now villify the courts for passing on all of this. But had the courts heard the case and ruled in favor of liberal sentiment, they’d still be villified.

There’s nothing to gain here.

I do think that the Pennsylvania case is an exception: can state-level courts decide to extend an election deadline, allowing more mail-in ballots than normal? If there’s actually a deadly pandemic, sure, there will need to be some concessions. But Coronavirus, to the story “a” crowd, wasn’t a big enough deal to merit a drastic shift in election procedure.

Either way, mail in voting didn’t significantly affect election results. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, a Republican Bush-era appointee wrote in his dissent: “That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election.”

Ultimately, there is a legitimate, compelling side to the election fraud story, one that points to an election no more remarkable than any other.

I’ll argue that people who villify this side of the story aren’t looking for truth.

I’ll also guarantee you that, had Trump won the election, there would be plenty of one-story-only liberals calling a slam-dunk foul.

Trust Problems

Ironically, the 25% are the same folks who took to social media in the early days of Coronavirus, calling it a hoax, claiming that the CDC’s data was fake and/or overblown, posting videos of unqualified medical professionals trying to convince the world of foul play.

They villified the other side of the story: majority, worldwide opinion from experts in the fields of epidemiology, virology, public health, and others. Why take the testimony of majority, worldwide, expert opinion when you’ve found three epidemiologists and ten family practice doc who are going out of their way to convince the world that you’re right?

Today, few – including the 25% – are arguing whether or not Coronavirus is real, or that it’s killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, or that the CDC’s numbers are reliable, or that vaccines work. My friends were wrong, not because they were stupid, but because they ignored the other side of the story.

Is that what’s happening with those who believe in a stolen election?

Further adding to my suspicioun, this crowd also believes that Donald Trump is one of the best presidents America has ever seen.

In compiling its list of the 10 Worst Presidents, U.S. News averaged presidents’ scores from three separate metrics: C-SPAN’s 2021 Presidential Historians Survey, Siena College’s Presidential Expert Poll and the Presidential Greatness Rankings conducted by professors at the University of Houston and Boise State University. You can read the results here.

Leaving Trump aside, this list doesn’t lie. The presidents who occupy the top slots were really bad presidents.

Is Trump some kind of anomaly, the only good president in the bad president’s list? Isn’t this another example of people simply hating him?

Or was he really that bad?

According to these surveys, Trump is anywhere from the worst to the fourth-worst president in US history.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but there aren’t any similar surveys claiming that Trump was the best president ever, much less a functional one. It’s hard to hear my friends cry out their undying praise for a president who’ll go down in history as one of the worst.

If nothing else, this is further evidence that the 25% crowd likes to read the same story, over and over again, at bedtime:

Once upon a time, there were some liberals, and they were so powerful and so organized and so coordinated that they orchestrated an evil plot to overturn an election. An election!!! Everything they do and say is an attempt to destroy our country, as the great Donald Trump has told us over and over and over again. 

What bothers me more than anything else is that the 25% is utterly and permanently convinced that 2020 election fraud, powerful enough to steal Trump’s presidency, is a fact.

It’s a slam dunk.

It’s not. As I’ve stated above, there’s some evidence, but it’s not so strong that we need to run around accusing the other side of perpetrating such an impressive feat.

Anti-Hitler sentiment was and always will be a slam dunk. The same goes for abolition. But a stolen 2020 election?

Believe it if you want to, but stop calling it fact.

Good Business

If I was the main guy at Google, I would throttle these stories as well. That’s not censorship, it’s just good business. Arguments in favor of election fraud are increasingly low quality, and search engines that put low quality articles at the top of their list won’t be around much longer.

It’s like that for any business: an art museum that specializes in 3rd grade crayon drawings, a cafe that specializes in stale donuts and decaf coffee, etc. won’t make much money.

So, you can expect Google to put low quality stuff near the bottom of your search results – everything from no-name blog posts to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

But, because so many Americans continue to buy into this, you can expect some media outlets to serve up a smorgasbord. These are the obscure, formerly unheard of’s who would go out of business were it not for the many conspiracy theories that the Trump era has spawned.

The real fraud is a politician who knows the truth. Trump’s not an idiot. The people who surround him aren’t idiots. He’s got the numbers. But he also knows that he can manipulate the anger of his constituents to further his Trump-at-any-cost agenda. That’s why he uses angry, inflammatory, manipulative words in most of his rhetoric.

As a Christian, I can tell you that anger, every time, makes us suckers for people who’ll use it against us for their benefit. Hitler didn’t do his Hitler stuff because he was some kind of political genius. Germany was angry and Hitler found a way to exploit it.

Happens all the time.

Take away the anger and Hitler has no power.

If one of my kids is angry at the other, and I tell them, “you have every right to be angry, don’t put up with their crap, you have to stand up for yourself, they want to hurt you,” etc., guess what comes next: a search for deeper truth? An investigation into the other side of the story?

Nope.

Even if I add a brief “but don’t hurt them” somewhere in my speech, I can expect bad things to follow.

Because I’ve taken their side in an emotionally heated moment, because I used language that communicates care and concern, because I declared them “right” and the other side “wrong,” they’ll trust me more than they ever have, and embrace the opposite sentiment for their family member.

Angry people are always the easiest to defraud.

Photo credit: Colin Lloyd