The latter, I would guess.
There probably is someplace in the U.S, where there was a Senate race, and a high profile ballot initiative, in 2020, but in 2024 the only races, other than for president, were low profile and/or uncontested. That could hypothetically explain it. But I’m skeptical of the whole thing without a mainstream newspaper story link.
Also consider:
I’m with others here — whatever dirty pool may have gone on in the election, would mostly be ”normal” dirty pool . Voter suppression tactics. Absentee/early voting nitpickery. Etc. And all of it sticking to the letter of the law. No need for “hacking the machines”.
( BTW thinking of Trump and Georgia 2020, I suspect if the ask had been of a hundred or a hundred and twenty votes out of a dead tie, someone may have given it more consideration. But “finding” almost 12 thousand votes when it’s public that you’re clearly losing was asking too much. A man has to know his limitations.)
Agree with Dr.Drake , having worked in election tallying, the likeliest cause of “cannonballing” is otherwise unengaged voters who show up to vote for/against ONE person.
I hate saying anything nice about mafia boss Don Corleone, but unsuccessfully attempting to get someone to commit election fraud is not election fraud.
What Donald Trump did in the the 2 January 2021 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was unambiguously a federal crime:
A person, including an election official, who in any election for Federal office—
…
(2) knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by—
…
(B) the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,
shall be fined in accordance with title 18 (which fines shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury, miscellaneous receipts (pursuant to section 3302 of title 31), notwithstanding any other law), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Whether he could have been convicted is another question; Trump’s lawyers could argue that he was just asking Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” which he had somehow heard were missing but in absence of evidence of this specific number of ‘missing’ votes that were also coincidentally what he needed to win the Electoral College votes for Georgia it certainly reads like an attempt to direct Raffensperger to alter the vote tally. On that basis alone he certainly should have been convicted in his impeachment trial for even directly contacting Raffensperger and suggesting that he ‘reevaluate’ the vote count. If he suspected error or malfeasance there is an entire legal process at the state level for assessing and auditing the ballot handling and tally process as well as federal oversight.
Stranger
The legal question here, I think, is whether the solicitation of somebody else to commit election fraud is itself election fraud or a different offense. The Code does not mention solicitation. To my reading the person must directly commit the act. IANAL.
Is that an impeachable offense? Most sane people would believe so. That Trump was impeached for so much worse an offense (1/6) so that mere election fraud wasn’t even needed as an article of impeachment will still be dropping jaws in the next century.
I would argue that using his position as President to attempt to influence a state official to alter the vote count comprises an ‘attempt’ even if the official in this case refused to enter into a conspiracy, but I agree that it is subject to interpretation and not very likely to result in a conviction.
I would consider the refusal to accept the results of a validated election to be an impeachable defense by default because one of the tenets of democratic norms is respect for elections and the orderly transfer of power. But that event was certainly overshadowed by his instigation of an insurrection for which he was impeached but not convicted thanks to Mitch McConnell (“May he rot in near-death for an interminable period of time,”) and thus able to run for office again. There will be many dissertations written on the utter failure of Congressional governance in the face of emergent fascism mostly asking, “Did they not study the history of the 20th Century about what you shouldn’t do when a clown gets elected to lead your country?”
Stranger
No, the standard is that if you have intent to commit a crime and take a substantial step towards committing that crime, you are considered guilty of the crime even if you fail to successfully carry out the crime. Trump fulfilled both of these requirements so he is guilty of an attempt to commit election fraud even if he failed to actually steal any votes.
Why a candidate loses a nation-wide election (made up of 50 state-wide elections) is overdetermined. There are multiple possible explanations and any one or two of them is probably sufficient. For 2024 we have any of the following:
- Joe Biden dropped out very late, after pretty conclusively demonstrating that he was not up to the task of running for reelection, much less governing
- His replacement was not nominated via a typical primary process, but by the acclaim of the party, making it hard to know how much support she really had
- His replacement was both an ethnic minority and a woman. While the US has elected a racial minority for POTUS, it has never elected a woman
- Trump’s base was extremely fired up both by his repeated prosecutions and the assassination attempts on his life.
- Part of the Democratic base was turned off by Biden/Harris inaction on Gaza
- Voter suppression/intimidation tactics in swing states
- Systemic vote-counting fraud across all of the swing states and even safe states
Given this long list of possible explanations, I don’t really see any reason to give much credence to item 7 when the much simpler explanations are more than sufficient. Personally, I think item 3 was probably enough (I’ve seen polling that indicates up to 5% of likely Democratic voters just didn’t feel comfortable voting for a Black woman).
I think it indicates that Trump voters are not necessarily GOP voters. I think the fact that Democrats have been cleaning house in every election Trump is not on the ballot since 2016 supports that theory.
I still have not seen a single 2024 election denier explain why their logic is any different than a 2020 election denier.
I agree, sadly.
I am also of the opinion that if the Dems just stuck a broom handle up the inside of Biden’s coat and left him standing upright, not saying anything, like a Halloween lawn decoration, he would have won.
Just to be clear, are you saying that claims that Trump stole the 2024 election are no more credible than claims that Biden stole the 2020 election?
If that’s your argument, here’s the reason why the two claims are not equally credible; the January 2, 2021 phone call that I described above and the January 6, 2021 insurrection. This is undeniable documented proof that Donald Trump tries to steal elections. There is no equivalent evidence about Joe Biden.
We all know that Trump would be willing to steal an election, or commit any other crime, if it benefitted him. But willingness to commit a crime is not evidence of guilt.
It’s not “willingness to commit a crime”. It’s having committed that crime already. I don’t believe that he stole the election, but I do believe he tried his best to do so through any means necessary.
We’ve gone beyond mere willingness. We’ve had actual attempts.
And as I said above, when you have a person who attempted to commit a crime when he was in a situation to do so, then you have justifiable grounds to suspect he attempted to commit that crime again when he was in the same situation on a different occasion.
FWIW, I’ll chip in my two cents here. I’ve had some real life conversations with my own mother about the subject because she’s convinced that shenanigans happened in the 2024 election. I’m not as convinced as she is but I am sympathetic to the idea.
We already have overwhelming proof that Trump and his cronies are more than willing to engage in election fraud and insurrection. As previously noted we know about the Georgia phone call. We know about January 6th. We know about the fake electors scheme. We already know they do not in any way regard the laws or norms of the country to be an impediment to their power hungry desires. And that is the primary motivation behind a lot of what’s going on right now. The racism, the corruption and grift, the incompetence, is all important as well, but the most important thing to them seems to be the acquisition and control of the levers of power. If they’re told they can’t do something by a federal court then it’s straight to SCOTUS where, coincidentally I’m sure, they always seem to get a 6-3 decision in their favor. Precedences and laws are being rewritten in real time to place more power in the hands of the executive.
That being said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That’s something I learned here on the board as a young person. As of yet I’ve not seen the extraordinary evidence to support the idea that something truly illegal happened in the 2024 election or that it was “stolen” in some way. Simple racism, misogyny, and incompetent news media, and various voter suppression techniques like gerrymandering go a long way to explaining exactly what happened.
On my third hand, I’ve not seen anything since January that leads me to believe this regime has any intention of peacefully relinquishing power at any time in any way. They’re placing military on the streets of major cities. We’ve seen LA and Washington DC. I’m reading now that there are small numbers of national guard troops on the streets in Chicago? Where’s going to be next? Portland? Baltimore? Memphis? New Orleans? All of these cities and I’m sure others that I’m not remembering at the moment have all been brought up in relation to these supposed “crime fighting” initiatives. And all of this is in direct contravention of posse comitatus and just the longstanding tradition that you do not want American soldiers performing law enforcement activities over American citizens. When I was growing up in the '80s and '90s stuff like this would have been unthinkable.
They’re asking individual states to hand over their voter rolls? For what purpose? Federal elections are handled at the state level and the numbers are reported in. The federal government has no need to know who is allowed to vote and who isn’t in my home state of Michigan for example.
The peaceful transfer of power is an anathema to fascists. Because it’s all they care about. And I’m looking directly at people like Stephen Miller and Russell Vought. And I don’t think it’s too controversial a statement that Trump, while yes a malignant narcissist and happily accepting power handed to him on a silver platter, does not have the intellectual capacity or focus to be implementing the things that are happening right now. If he was we would have seen all of this happening back in 2017 and 2018. Trump isn’t powerless, but he’s not the only one throwing those levers of power right now.
And I also think that we’re seeing the groundwork being laid for something truly heinous to happen during the midterm elections next year. Those troops on the ground in places like LA and DC aren’t going anywhere. And they are under direct control of the federal government. If on election night in November of 2026 we start seeing highly prominent elections, like at the senate or house level or judges, in places like California and New York going Republican against all expectations, I have to think that that’s a huge red flag, even if under normal circumstances I could chalk it up to the vagaries of the electorate. And I don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility right now.
I don’t think you see how this
contradicts this
There is no evidence that Biden stole the 2020 election or that TFG stole the 2024 election. There is evidence that TFG tried to interfere with the results of the 2020 election; I don’t think anyone is seriously trying to dispute this. That TFG tried, quite ham-handedly and unsuccessfully, to interfere in the 2020 election is not evidence that he did in the 2024 election and cannot be used as such. This is the entire point of the “prior bad acts” rule of evidence.
If you want to say this isn’t a court room, and as such you’re going to give weight to it, fine. You’re right, it isn’t a courtroom. And there’s a reason nobody has brought a case to court claiming that TFG stole the 2024 election using his interference in the 2020 election as the entirety of its evidence. Because said case wouldn’t even make it to court before being dismissed. But if you’re going to say TFG stole the 2024 election anyway, and this is the entirety of your evidence, I’m sorry, but you aren’t any better than the MAGAs insisting that TFG won the 2020 election, but Biden stole it in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
Again, show me some evidence - any evidence at all that TFG stole the 2024 election. Because evidence of prior bad acts isn’t evidence of the crime in question. One may as well use TFG’s felony convictions in New York or the civil convictions in the E. Jean Carrol cases to ‘prove’ that he stole the 2024 election.
I disagree.
This isn’t about Trump’s guilt for other crimes. This is about his guilt for committing election fraud.
We have documented proof that Donald Trump tries to commit election fraud when he runs for President. On more than one occasion. That is evidence that Donald Trump may have committed election fraud when he was running for President in 2024.
I recognize that evidence is not the same as proof. And I recognize that not all evidence is legally admissible in a court of law. But denying there is evidence is foolish.
I went back to reread the entire thread. No one has presented any evidence of Trump committing election fraud. @BobLibDem did provide a cite from a group claiming that they had statistical anomalies but I can find nothing but some social media discussion and no actual news organizations or election groups confirming or dismissing it. A claim is not evidence.
If you have real evidence of election fraud, please show it so we can evaluate it. The rest of us are defining election fraud as changed numbers of votes, whether suppressed or added, to make a difference in the final totals. If you are using a different definition, please state that as well.