2 ms·
> Elections should absolutely be questioned and audited regularly. Sure there's no problem with that. But that's not what Trump and his team did. Trump claime
by ModernMech 4y ago
> Elections should absolutely be questioned and audited regularly.
Sure there's no problem with that. But that's not what Trump and his team did.
Trump claimed there was fraud so loudly not because he wanted to find actual fraud (which he had no reason to believe existed), but because he wanted people to be very concerned with the idea the election was potentially fraudulent. He wanted people to be concerned with this idea because it legitimized his true motivations - he wanted power for himself.
Trump's team didn't actually want to find fraud; no, their goal was to create an environment of suspicion about fraud, but they had absolutely no intention whatsoever to prove their case. We know this because in all of the 60+ court cases they brought, they never alleged fraud, let alone attempted to prove it. If they did, they would have revealed they had zero evidence for their claims. Of course for this reason, they lost every single case (except I think an early PA case that didn't even relate to claims of fraud).
And it needs to be said that the elections were investigated. Georgia investigated every claim made by the President, and found none of them credible. If Trump were genuinely concerned with finding fraud and simply questioning the results of the election, he would have been satisfied with their process. But the process didn't end up with him winning Georgia, so he wasn't satisfied, to the point that he threatened Georgia elections officials with prosecution when they refused to overturn his loss there.
So yes, when it comes to elections generally, they should absolutely be questioned and audited regularly. But we must also say in the same breath that we cannot let disingenuous concerns about "election integrity" actually undermine elections. That's a problem too, which has demonstrably lead to a coup attempt and violent insurrection. So I would say "voter fraud hysteria" is actually a worse problem than voter fraud itself, which is proven to be rare and hasn't caused any coups or insurrections.