# Where are all the election deniers hiding? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 11, 2022, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758 "2022-11-11T18:20:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/41 "2022-11-12T18:41:32Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Even Trump has been quiet. He’s been all over Truth Social with stolen election talk and demanding new elections in Arizona and such. In 2020 it took a little while between the election and the violence. When elections start getting certified across states and the Georgia runoff is done we’ll see what happens. Maybe Trump was the key though. People across the country were willing to overthrow the government for him. They might not want to put themselves out there for, say, Jim Marchant. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/42 "2022-11-12T18:46:48Z")
I read a tweet about election deniers that said that maybe it’s hard even for most politicians to just lie outright. That’s Trump’s super power – zero regard for the truth. Other politicians and pundits decided to believe what Trump was saying about his own election, not having done the work themselves, so they could come out and say there was fraud, whatever. It was just believing in a different reality. When it comes to their own election, when they have their own pollsters and poll watchers, and watched their own election, it’s just not that easy to make up their own reality out of whole cloth. If I were a Fox News watcher and a local politician – I could accept Fox’s lies about Trump’s election – I just won’t dig further. But, my own election? I know what happened and, unless I’m Trump, I may have a harder time just outright lying. All politicians lie, but it’s usually exaggerations and shading the truth. Trump’s “the sky is green and my inauguration was the biggest ever” is really unusual, and maybe more difficult to pull off. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/43 "2022-11-12T19:05:03Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > So he [Trump] said the 2016 election was rigged, even though he won? Yes. Claimed there were millions of votes by Mexicans bused in specifically to do that or something similar. Appointed a commission to look into voter fraud, which had trouble finding anything and fairly quickly disbanded. > [@dolphinboy](#): > > I thought that was after the 2020 election when he lost after being ahead. He didn’t understand that mail-in ballots were still being counted. Oh, he knew there were mail-in ballots being counted. But his position on them was they were fraudulent, more or less, despite the fact that he, himself voted by mail.† When campaigning, he told his supporters not to vote by mail. As a result, roughly 25,000 Georgian Republicans voted by mail in the primary but did not vote in the general. That’s twice his margin of loss in that state. †He tried to make a distinction between voting absentee and voting by mail, but virtually no one else could see the difference. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/44 "2022-11-12T19:14:29Z")
I’ve noticed that Stacy Abrams has been fairly quiet, this time around. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/45 "2022-11-12T19:17:00Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > > [@dolphinboy](#): > > > > So he [Trump] said the 2016 election was rigged, even though he won? > > Yes. Claimed there were millions of votes by Mexicans bused in specifically to do that or something similar. Appointed a commission to look into voter fraud, which had trouble finding anything and fairly quickly disbanded. And to explain, even though he won the election, he lost the popular vote. He has a very fragile ego; despite being so large, it’s an immense house of cards. He couldn’t stand the idea of not having the majority of people voting for him. Just winning the position wasn’t enough, he needed to prove that he won in every way. Especially since he constantly insisted that he’d won “in a landslide”, and even he knew people would have trouble buying that if he didn’t even win the majority of the popular vote. ---
**Author:** ![dolphinboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dolphinboy/32/330_2.png) [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/46 "2022-11-12T19:31:14Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Claimed there were millions of votes by Mexicans bused in specifically to do that or something similar. Appointed a commission to look into voter fraud, which had trouble finding anything and fairly quickly disbanded I still can’t, and never will, understand how millions of average Americans bought into the big lie even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence. Even today, people are convinced the 2020 election was stolen right out from under their noses. I don’t think they’re stupid, I believe that when you join a cult, you have to go along with whatever your leader says or risk being ostracized by all your friends. Independent thinking goes out the window. If someone had told me ten years ago that the big lie would work, I would have said they were crazy. This isn’t 1930s Germany, nobody’s dumb enough to believe someone who lies about everything. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/47 "2022-11-12T19:49:39Z")
> [@dolphinboy](#): > > I still can’t, and never will, understand how millions of average Americans bought into the big lie even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence. > > Even today, people are convinced the 2020 election was stolen right out from under their noses. I don’t think they’re stupid, I believe that when you join a cult, you have to go along with whatever your leader says or risk being ostracized by all your friends. Independent thinking goes out the window. I’ve been feeling the same way ever since 2000. Believe it or not, there are STILL some people who think that Bush and/or the Supreme Court stole that election. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/48 "2022-11-12T20:00:07Z")
I’m not seeing the connection. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/49 "2022-11-12T20:17:12Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > The last person to be elected to the position was Kim Schrier, who left her position to work for the Biden administration. Semi-nitpick: you’re thinking of [Kim **Wyman**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Wyman); [Kim **Schrier**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schrier) was running for **re** -election in WA-8, and beat the thoroughly odious Matt Larkin. I’m not in a position to comment on the notion that Julie Anderson was a closet election denier — an idea which seems to have originated in the upper echelons of the Washington Democrats — other than to say she was Pierce County Auditor (chief election official, among other things) for twelve years, and I heard nary a peep against how she did her job. She ran as an independent because she thought the SoS should be nonpartisan. YMM, of course, V. And for the record, I’m not particularly sorry about how the election turned out. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/50 "2022-11-12T20:21:31Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > The Crybaby strategy has become nothing more than The Boy Who Cried Wolf. They’ve learned the moral of the story: don’t tell the same lie twice. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cl66ilQCCNs/hqdefault.jpg "DS9 Garak the boy who cried Wolf (Improbable Cause)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl66ilQCCNs) > [@DWMarch](#): > > Perhaps it has finally caught on that election denial is a bad narrative for promoting one’s causes? It would be an admission that for the second election in a row, Democrats have cheated their way to victory so skillfully that they do not appear to be cheating at all. They may have also realized that “The election is gonna get stolen anyway, so why bother to vote?” is not a useful message to send to their followers. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/51 "2022-11-12T20:27:46Z")
> [@OttoDaFe](#): > > Semi-nitpick: you’re thinking of [Kim **Wyman**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Wyman); [Kim **Schrier**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schrier) was running for **re** -election in WA-8, and beat the thoroughly odious Matt Larkin. Thanks, yes. Too many Kims! 🤦‍♂️ ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/52 "2022-11-12T20:46:34Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > I’ve been feeling the same way ever since 2000. Believe it or not, there are STILL some people who think that Bush and/or the Supreme Court stole that election. Eh, it’s not that hard to understand, everything that happened is public knowledge, if you actually are confused about what happened, I’m sure that we could help you out, but this really isn’t the thread for it. Feel free to open a thread asking to have what happened in the 2000 election explained to you, and how any attempts at comparing it to Trump’s 2020 meltdown are pure fallacy. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/53 "2022-11-12T21:13:52Z")
One kind of denial prevalent, albeit less important, is where votes remain uncounted in a tight race, and candidates, and their staff, insist they are confident of victory – even though both sides should be worried. Here is a current example near me, but I could find dozens: [Joe Hogan & Mark Moffa Race Remains Separated By Only Two Votes](https://levittownnow.com/2022/11/12/joe-hogan-mark-moffa-race-remains-separated-by-only-two-votes/) > [@](#): > > A county spokesperson said election officials believe approximately 156 segregated mail-in/absentee ballots, 275 provisional, and 32 military ballots are from precincts in the 142nd Legislative District. The votes will determine the outcome of the race. > > Democrats and Republicans are both confident their candidates will take the seat, which is presently held by Republican State Rep. Frank Farry, who won his election to head to the Pennsylvania Senate. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/54 "2022-11-12T22:31:22Z")
If Mofa holds on the Dems will take a majority in the PA legislature. I think they need to win one of two undecided seats. ---
**Author:** ![JaneDoe42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janedoe42/32/14104_2.png) [@JaneDoe42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JaneDoe42)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/55 "2022-11-13T00:02:17Z")
Here’s some election deniers. A few of them are upset about how long it is taking but I promise that most of them are already positive that the election has been stolen. Unless Lake somehow manages to win, then everything is just swell. > **[Demonstrators protest voting tabulation process at Maricopa County Election...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/11/12/demonstrators-in-phoenix-protest-maricopa-county-voting-tabulation-process/10676932002/)** > > About 200 people gathered near the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix on Saturday to protest the voting tabulation process. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/56 "2022-11-13T01:07:09Z")
> I think another batch should be dropped in Maricopa in about an hour. If it’s not good for Kari Lake things could ramp up. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/57 "2022-11-13T02:05:36Z")
But…dump, tranche, or batch? 😵‍💫 ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/58 "2022-11-13T02:08:12Z")
I think that the MAGA guys follow the lead of outlets like FOX, newsmax, one america etc and (to a lesser extent) the comments of Republicans that still have a seat. Since _they_ haven’t pushed much on the “stolen election” thing, the mob has stayed quiet. Now, that of course just shifts the question to why RW media / GOP have not played the election-denial card, but this one is easier to answer: strategy. This is yet another poor election performance for Trump, and for the election-denying candidates. Accordingly, prominent figures on the right are testing the water right now. Do we need to shift tack? Is it time to abandon Trump and get on the DS train? * * * All this being said, I frequent RW forums, and they are gradually building up on election denial stuff. They are making big hay about the queuing in Maricopa county, about how “suspicious” it is that it takes a long time to count votes, and even that the polls before the election were dubious: because they kept changing (yeah, it doesn’t need to make sense). It’s quite possible some ludicrous CT may yet take hold. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/59 "2022-11-13T02:27:16Z")
…and then Alaska and Georgia down the pike with that toxicity. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2022, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758/60 "2022-11-13T03:03:55Z")
I sense a certain tension between the faction that wants to _finally_ dump Trump and the faction that clings to him all the harder. The former agenda is served by being brutally honest about how the GOP done screwed up; the latter is served by insisting that it’s all a RIGGED FRAUD HOAX. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-are-all-the-election-deniers-hiding/974758.md?page=4)