Top 10 Reasons Republicans think the 2020 Election was Stolen

A Guide for Democrats to Understand Republican Misgivings about 2020

Let’s not forget that Democrats were far more skeptical going into the 2020 Elections than Republicans were (click on graphic for poll). Winning can make you forget these types of thing.

Anyways, I’m going to try to objectively list the top ten reasons why I believe the majority of Republicans still believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Before you dismiss this out of hand as crazy Trump supporters, consider that the majority of independents also suspected election fraud. There’s something to this story and it’s important that people understand why.

The list will be compiled in order of increasingly credible reasons for there to exist doubts. So #10 will be the most batshit crazy reason while #1 would represent the most legitimate greivance in my opinion.

But first, some disclaimers:

• I did a deep dive into this subject during November/Early December of 2020 on this topic. I looked at all the numbers, all the theories and all the evidence available back then.

• I don’t believe that there is sufficient evidence to prove that voting fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 election, though the absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence of fraud. Mass absentee ballot voting makes any election more vulnerable to fraud and thus will always generate voting integrity skepticism.

• I also don’t think it is useful to dwell on past results beyond the lessons necessary to address potential issues of voter integrity moving forward. The election is conducted based on rules that are decided before voting begins. If those rules are broken for electoral benefit then your only recourse is to prove that fraud via the judiciary. If you can’t then you move on. That’s the only system that can exist because no election is perfect.

What Trump or other politicians said about the election are not covered in the list because that’s baked into the cake. Despite what Democrats might think, Republicans aren’t skeptical about the election because Donald Trump said so. Talk to any Republican and you will hear a number of reasons, most of which I think I cover in this list.

Without further delay, here is the list.

7-10: The Demonstrably False Reasons

10: Dominion Voting Machines (or other IT systems) were Hacked

Voting machines can be hacked.

CNN has reported on this extensively:

NBC also did so:

Having said that, the allegations by Sidney Powell about Dominion voting machines being hacked were complete garbage.

When sued by Dominion, Powell’s defense argued that

"no reasonable person would conclude that the statements [by Powell about the 2020 election] were truly statements of fact…it was clear to reasonable persons that Powell's claims were her opinions and legal theories."

Of course, Dominion made the entire thing look even more suspicious by not communicating at all about allegations that were rampant all over conservative media. Normally the most important thing to do in a crisis is to communicate rapidly, but they never said anything (maybe they couldn’t) which led to the sense that something was off.

Yes, you can find individual cases of machines being unsecured, connected to the internet or having yielded questionable errors, but they do not add up to massive voter fraud.

Still, I personally think that electronic voting is a bad idea because of security concerns. Paper ballots would offer far more transparency and, despite what the voting machine industry says, it would not take that long to hand count the ballots…we’ve done it for most of our history. And you’d be surprised how many modern countries do exactly this.

9: Election Result Feed - Vote Switching

This is one of the most convincing ways to prove voting fraud because it apparently shows “vote switching” on live TV:

Basically, you can see how the Republican candidate’s votes total goes down while the Democrat’s go down with the new update.

But that’s misleading.

What I learned after working with the live election data feed for many many hours is that the information is communicated in terms of total votes and percentage (to one decimal point) of that vote for each candidate. The live broadcast does the math for you and calculates the number of votes, but that is purely based on the percentage.

Therefore, as the percentages change throughout the night, the number of total votes can appear to decrease. Every time there is a change in decimal points it causes a sharp drop/increase to what appears to be the total vote count.

Still, if you are not familiar with this then it’s easy to see how it appears that vote switching is occurring in real-time.

8: Shrinking Leads - Inability to count all votes in one day

There was one winner on election night and that lead slowly evaporated over the coming days.

This is explained by the counting of absentee ballots which broke overwhelmingly in favor of Biden. This then leads to suspicion about Biden’s margins in those ballots as it then appears that they are “finding” the necessary votes after the fact.

The optics of this entire thing were terrible. There appeared to be pauses in the voting in some states. There were huge data dumps that happened at odd hours. We already mentioned the decimal point live election result feed.

While one party was celebrating, the other party was looking carefully at any reports of fraud and thinking that something was fishy.

What slowly emerged post election over a couple of days was the feeling that the election was being systematically stolen, and for the most part MSM was nowhere to be seen. Instead of making election integrity an important new story whereby reporters actually investigated the claims being made, they completely ignored it until it was too late.

On the flip-side, social media and partisan conservative media were reporting all the stories about potential election fraud. What resulted was actually very predictable.

I wrote this on November 9th, 2020 because I saw where this was going…it was obvious that we were heading towards some sort of violence because you can’t just ignore that kind of building anger in large parts of your population without giving it any kind of outlet…eventually it explodes and you get Jan 6th.

Gummi Bear @gummibear737

I’m not making a political statement I’m just predicting what is going to happen People on the Trump side are furious and they think the election was stolen They are not going to play nice Ignore their concerns at your own peril Advice: convince them the election was fair

7: The Eye Test

Many people just can’t comprehend how Biden could have possibly won. They look around them and they see no Biden flags, or bumper stickers…heck, they don’t even think they know a Biden voter.

They find it incredibly unlikely that Biden hid in his basement during the entire campaign and was absolutely horrible as a campaigner yet still got 81 million votes…the most ever in history.

Trump’s rallies was overflowing with people and enthusiasm…Biden couldn’t fill up a used-car parking lot.

In reality, an enthusiastic vote counts the same as an unenthusiastic vote. The 2020 election was a referendum on Trump and Biden was the beneficiary of a lot of unenthusiastic voters who just did not like Trump.

4-6: Things that Make People Very Suspicious

6: Statistical Anomalies

There are actually some statistical anomalies that are not entirely without merit:

• Probably the most famous was the “Bellweather Counties” observation: Biden defeated Trump in only 1 of 19 “Bellweather Counties” which are counties where a majority of voters have supported the election winner in 8 of the last 9 elections.

• Biden won far more votes than Trump or Obama while winning far fewer counties than Trump or Obama.

• During my research, I found this anomaly which I thought was pretty relevant: In terms of votes that were available to Biden via absentee ballots in Pennsylvania by political identification of the voters, voting patterns would have had to be quite anomalous to coincide with his vote totals.

Gummi Bear @gummibear737

🚨PA Absentee Ballot(AB) Irregularities Deep-dive🚨 ABs in PA - even if Biden received: -95% of returned Democrat votes -21% of returned Republican votes -80% of returned Independent votes He wouldn't have as many votes as he actually received 🕵️Investigation Needed🕵️ Read on

These anomalies exist, and while people have offered explanations or rebuttals for the phenomenon, they are not dispositive.

Ultimately, anomalies don’t really prove anything. Maybe people are finding them because they’re looking really hard for them. Regardless, they do cause suspicion.

Note: There have been other claims of statistical anomalies that have not panned out. For example, this popular analysis seemed to show an anomaly, but this was later explained by the phenomenon of vote-splitting that occurs in both parties.

5: Denial of Access to Republican Election Watchers

Many remember the scandal over the purported suitcases of votes being counted after hours in Georgia. What most don’t remember is that this initially became an issue because they were counting after Republic observers were told to leave.

YouTube has scoured most of the videos of Republican election observers reporting that their access to the voting process was encumbered or denied by confrontational elections workers. This is the one I could still find related to this phenomenon.

But this was a widespread problem and on voting day, social media was full of eye-witness accounts by election observers that reported not being able to verify that voting was proceeding transparently.

At the time, this created a great deal of consternation for Republicans because it was coupled with the ongoing counting which was slowly turning the election in Biden’s favor.

The prevailing sentiment was that they wouldn’t be trying to obscure the counting process if they weren’t trying to hide something.

The evidence here is anecdotal so it is dismissed out of hand by the left, but you can be certain that people on the right saw this phenomenon happening in realtime and these testimonials by hundreds of observers in all the major swing states left a lasting impression.

4: Election Tools: Drop Boxes and Voter Registries

There is probably no greater symbol of election integrity skepticism than ballot drop boxes. When Republicans hear the word “Drop Box”, they think “Ballot Harvesting”.

Democrats have actually made ballot harvesting legal in some states, although I think it ultimately hurts them more than it helps them because those states are already deep blue. What Republicans see is an incredibly corrupt tactic that favors activism over civic responsibility and which is very susceptible to fraud.

Right or wrong, the point is that Republicans are incredibly suspicious of the concept of Drop Boxes because it allows the dropping off of multiple votes at the same time. This is legal in the context of one person dropping off multiple votes for family members, but there is no way to distinguish between this and people dropping off harvested votes.

Another constant in US elections is that voter registries are a mess. Simply put they are not accurate.

They have a really bad reputation historically as they were seen as a tool by which local political machines could mobilize “the dead” to vote en masse.

Republicans think that the registries are bloated with dead people and out of state voters which can be used to “find” votes after the fact.

Whether by bureaucratic incompetence or via other considerations, this continues to be a problem which is greatly amplified anecdotally by social media.

Also, voter registries are digital so they’re also vulnerable in that way.

1-3: Legitimate Reasons for Election Integrity Skepticism

3: Courts/Election Officials Changing Voting Laws and Procedures

In short, there was a lot of legal positioning by Republicans and Democrats with regards to the rules by which elections would be conducted. Unfortunately for Republicans, the Democrats were far more aggressive and successful at this and managed to use Covid-19 to their party’s benefit. Sometimes it wasn’t even based on judicial decisions, but rather decision by local election officials.

For example, in Wisconsin a rare provision for “indefinitely confined” was used to request 200k such ballots without photo ID.

Gummi Bear @gummibear737

To be clear, in Wisconsin, if you are “indefinitely confined” then you can request a ballot without a photo ID Normally, there are a few hundred such requests This year they were over 200,000 such ballots requested No, COVID is not a valid reason for using this provision

Mary Spicuzza @MSpicuzzaMJS

An attorney for @JoeBiden campaign says that the Trump campaign objecting to thousands of ballots cast by “indefinitely confined” voters is an attempt disenfranchise primarily elderly & ill voters. The Trump campaign attorney says voting absentee is a “privilege.”

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic-majority in the States Supreme Court modified election law (Act 77) enacted by the State Legislature after legal challenges by Democrats:

• They permitted the use of drop boxes, even though Act 77 did not.

• They extended the deadline to receive mail-in ballots to 5pm on the Friday following the election, even though Act 77 did not.

• They effectively ruled that mail-in ballots don’t need to go through a signature verification process, even though Act 77 required it.

The problem is that the US Constitution very clearly states that how elections are held is under the purview of the State Legislature so there exists a question about the Constitutionality of the modifications granted by the State Supreme Court.

The Constitution says:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof

I think there is a legitimate question of how much the courts should be allowed to intervene in how elections are conducted and even if it is constitutional.

Then there is the issue that courts (including SCOTUS) do not want to touch issues of electoral procedure after the votes have been cast because the idea of disenfranchising votes would be scandalous.

I think it is important that all sides have confidence in the rules under which elections are conducted.

Unfortunately there will always be differences of opinion about what constitutes a “fair” rule so it’s likely this will continue to be a problem for both sides moving forward.

2: Mainstream Media/Social Media/Tech Bias - Especially Hunter Biden Laptop Story

America is accustomed to the media putting their thumb on the scale when reporting to the general public. They were even more active this around…Biden essentially stayed in his basement while the mainstream media ran cover for his campaign.

But they are less accustomed to Social Media and Big Tech adding their thumbs.

And they’re even less accustomed to all three applying their full weight to the scale.

This happened during the 2020 election.

For example, Google manipulated their search engine results to favor Democrats. This came out via a Project Veritias investigation which was sufficiently credible for it to be covered by Senator Ted Cruz in a senate hearning:

Congressman Dan Crenshaw also covered the Project Veritas report in a congressional hearing:

In fact, even today, in putting together this article, I had difficulty Googling a lot of material from back in 2020 about election fraud. I had to switch to DuckDuckGo to actually be able to find information that I remembered seeing since then.

This is unfair, but I’d say that Republicans have even gotten used to these subtle attempts to influence public opinion.

However, what happened with the Hunter Biden Laptop story blatantly exceeded anything that could be considered within the bounds of normalized fairplay.

This bombshell story was systematically denied and suppressed by everybody. Twitter even locked the NY Post out of their account for reporting the story.

More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter calling it Russian disinformation…this was then run nonstop by the media.

The only problem is that the story was real. Every news agency eventually had to admit this, but it was too late by that moment.

And not only was it real, but it had the potential to significantly alter the result of the Presidential election.

A poll found that 16% of Biden voters would not have voted for him if they had know about the story…that’s more than enough to significantly change the outcome.

Btw, good luck finding this article via Google!!

Here were the results of the poll:

Anybody with a shred of intellectual honesty should see that Republicans have a point here. This was blatantly unfair.

1: Mass Mail-In Voting

Republicans simply do not trust the process of mail-in voting.

A quick look at how voting is conducted around the world shows that the US is in the minority in allowing most citizens to vote by mail.

Vote by mail was used in France until 1975 when it was banned because of fears regarding fraud.

I think the best argument against the use of mail-in voting was given by AG Bill Barr before the 2020 election.

First Bill Barr makes the case that mail in voting as a practice is not secure and is vulnerable to “fraud and coercion”.

“The bipartisan commission chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker said back in 2009 that mail in voting is fraught with the risk of fraud and coercion”

“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion. For example we indicted someone in Texas…1,700 ballots collected from people who could vote. He made them out to vote for the people he wanted.”

The second point he makes is that voter registries are not accurate and that mailing ballots to people is likely to result in ballots getting to the wrong people.

“People who get them are not the right people. They are people who have replaced the previous occupant and they can make them out. Sometimes multiple ballots come to the same house with several generations of occupants. Do you think that’s a way to run a vote?”

The final point that he makes is probably the most important one: Don’t mess around with election integrity in the current political context.

This is playing with fire. We’re a closely divided country here. And people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government. And people trying to change the rules to this methodology, which as a matter of logic is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire.

The Democrat counter to this is that no fraud, sufficient to change the outcome of the election, was ever proven therefore the election was not stolen.

While true, I think that misses the point.

First, the absence of evidence of fraud is not evidence of the absence of fraud. If the system itself if vulnerable to fraud, then there will be suspicion of the results even if that fraud cannot be definitively proven.

Second, the accuracy of mail-in voting is very difficult to verify. Signature verification can be effective in validating the identity of the voter, but it doesn’t eliminate the issue of coercion.

Also, in the states that decided the Presidential election (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) only Arizona has signature verification.

If Trump had won George, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin then he wins the Electoral College 278-260. The mail-in ballots in those states can never be properly verified to ensure their legitimacy.

Conclusions:

I was seeing the phenomenon in real-time back in November 2020. Republicans were extremely suspicious that the election had been stolen and nobody was paying attention to their concerns.

Januar 6th was not a surprise to me given what I was seeing in terms of half the country thinking that Democracy had been stolen away from them.

If you compare this to Russiagate, where Democrats were very concerned that Russian collusion played a part in the 2016 election, then you see the double standard that Republicans perceive. Democrats got a special investigation and three years of non-stop media investigations and reports. Republicans were told they were nutters.

And I’m pretty sure that if the roles were reversed and Biden had lost, we would have had never ending scrutiny about election integrity over much of the same reasons. Let’s not forget that Democrats were suspicious of the election long before Republicans took up this cause.

You don’t need to agree with Republicans on election integrity, but I do think you should try to understand it from their perspective because calling them election deniers doesn’t help us get closer to a system where everybody has confidence in elections.