Multiple polls over the past three years have indicated that nearly one third of Americans and nearly 70 percent of Republicans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This belief persists despite the total lack of evidence for such widespread fraud. No one anywhere has produced actual evidence of fraud of any significant scale.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody, as election officials have been unanimous in their statements since the days following the 2020 election that the election was neither rigged nor corrupted.

Christopher Cox Krebs served as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2018 – 2020. He was appointed by Donald Trump.

“The 2020 election was the most secure election certainly in modern history,” Krebs said. “I have no question about the security of the systems, of the process, of the vote, of the count, [or] of the certification.”

Trump’s own Attorney General William Barr contradicted Trump’s claims of voter fraud when he told the Associated Press, “The Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread fraud in this year’s election.

The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee on Nov 12, 2020 issued a statement saying, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.

Trump’s team filed 62 lawsuits in various jurisdictions challenging election results, and lost 61. None of the suits provided evidence of fraud and most alleged that local procedures were improper. Trump’s lone victory came when a Pennsylvania judge ruled that voters could not go back and “cure” their ballots if they failed to provide proper identification three days after the election. The ruling affected few votes and came nowhere near changing the outcome in Pennsylvania, which Biden won by 81,660 votes.  Every other case was dismissed and eventually 14 of Trump’s attorneys were either disbarred, pled guilty to charges, were suspended from practicing law, or were indicted and charged in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and John Eastman.

All of the states whose results Trump questioned maintained paper ballots, so scanner results were confirmed through audits. Recounts, backed by the Republican party and the Trump campaign, were conducted in counties in Wisconsin, Arizona and Texas and at a statewide level in Georgia. No recount found evidence of voter fraud.

An Associated Press analysis of the 2020 presidential election finding that of the 25.5 million votes cast in the closest states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin — fewer than 425 ballots had been identified as suspicious despite numerous audits and recounts.

Yet, the idea that Trump – whose approval ratings never reached 50 percent during his term – won in some kind of mystical landslide persists.

While most of this is the result of cultish devotion, some might be attributed to a lack of understanding of America’s voting system.

Most people have no idea of the security measures that election boards have had in place for years. I have worked in various temporary positions for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections for more then four years as a precinct official and location manager on election days, as a member of the election night staff, as a member of the election support team helping prepare all the equipment and materials used at the county’s 285 voting locations, as a vote-by-mail official, and as a member of a signature verification team. After the election I will be a member of the team reviewing provisional ballots and this week and next I am part of the ballot collection team assisting voters at the county’s ballot drop box. So, I have had an opportunity to see most of the entire voting process.

Here are some things about election management that I didn’t know before I started working there:

• Any task – before, after, or during election day – that involves handling, moving, or processing ballots – both voted and non-voted  – and scanners must be conducted by a two person bi-partisan team. The teams are usually comprised of a Democrat and a Republican, but Independent voters can also replace one of the major party voters.
• The building where ballots are stored and where election results are tabulated is studded with video surveillance equipment. Unless you are in a restroom, you are never out of sight of a camera. And I am not actually sure about the restrooms…
• Secure rooms where ballots – blank and voted – and scanners are stored are secured with two combination locks. One combination is known only to Republican manages, the other is known only to Democratic managers.
• On election night, there are hundreds of people working at the election processing center. No one is ever alone with access to scanner memory sticks or voted ballots.
• Pre-identified observers and members of the news media are permitted to observe all aspects of voting and vote tabulation
• Every ballot has a barcode and we know who that ballot was issued to. Once the ballot is filled out the voter removes the stub with the barcode, hands the stub to one of two members of the bi-partisan scanner team, and inserts the voted ballot into the scanner. The scanner retains the ballot and the precinct official retains the barcode stubs. (By removing the barcode before scanning, we ensue that no one can know how a person voted.)
• At the end of the voting period, each voting location compares the number of scanned ballots with the number of ballots issued to voters. Any discrepancies are immediately addressed.
• Scanners are never connected to the internet. Vote totals are recorded on memory sticks which are transported to the election headquarters on election night by armed couriers.

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has detailed information about election security on their website.

America’s elections are conducted by county election boards overseen by state officials – frequently, the Secretary of State.  Any attempt at large-scale fraud would require the cooperation and participation of hundreds if not thousands of election officials in hundreds of counties.

Experts say to pull off stealing a presidential election would require large numbers of people willing to risk prosecution, prison time and fines working in concert with election officials from both parties who are willing to look the other way. And everyone somehow would keep quiet about the whole affair.

“It would be the most extensive conspiracy in the history of planet Earth,” said David Becker, a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush who now directs the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Non-citizen voting is one of the latest voting concerns. But there is no evidence that non-citizens are voting in significant numbers. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. It is not legal in any state for a noncitizen to cast a ballot in a federal election.

The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of legal actions regarding election conduct found only 24 instances of noncitizens voting between 2003 and 2023

A study conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice analyzing 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election concluded that there were approximately 30 instances of noncitizens casting votes

“The last thing [migrants] want to do is put themselves at risk of being detained, deported, let alone put a wrench in their application for citizenship,” said Ron Hayduk, an expert on noncitizen voting at San Francisco State University.

Of course, by now the folks that want to believe the election was stolen will continue to believe it, no matter what.

There has never been any actual evidence of widespread fraud, and every hocus-pocus bogus theory has been quickly and thoroughly debunked. (Venezuelan hackers?)

But the mythology has changed American elections, and not for the better.

When I started working elections – in those carefree pre-2020 days – we believed that our job was to ensure that every registered voter had an opportunity to vote, and every proper vote should be counted. We saw voters as our neighbors, friends, co-workers, parents of our children’s playmates, people we went to school and church with. They were Americans who were eager to perform a fundamental civic duty.

Now, we are expected treat voters as criminals. We have to assume that every voter is engaged in some nefarious attempt to destroy America.

Today I spent five hours guarding the county’s ballot drop box as a member of a six-person bi-partisan team. It is the only box we are allowed in a county with more than 800,000 registered voters.

If a voter tries to give us a ballot from a disabled neighbor, we are supposed to react like it is plutonium or something, and refuse to accept it. If they bring a family member’s ballot, we can take it if they sign a form.

This edict from the state follows voter purges, stricter voter ID requirements, limits on the number of drop boxes, and closing of voting locations across Ohio.

And worse, as a result of the unceasing drumbeat of false election claims, a growing percentage of Americans distrust our election systems.

October 21, 2024

Image by Barbara J. Perenic / Columbus Dispatch