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Thursday, July 14, 2022

Lost, Not Stolen

For the record:  A report entitled Lost, Not Stolen, written "by conservatives for conservatives" and signed by several retired Republican senators and federal judges, was released today, documenting in great detail the failure of Trump partisans to prove the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.  NBC's Morning Joe presents an interview with two of the authors:

 

Excerpt from the introduction to the report (emphasis mine):
We therefore have undertaken an examination of every claim of fraud and miscount put forward by former President Trump and his advocates, and now put the results of those investigations before the American people, and especially before fellow conservatives who may be uncertain about what and whom to believe. Our conclusion is unequivocal: Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states. Biden’s victory is easily explained by a political landscape that was much different in 2020 than it was when President Trump narrowly won the presidency in 2016. President Trump waged his campaign for re-election during a devastating worldwide pandemic that caused a severe downturn in the global economy. This, coupled with an electorate that included a small but statistically significant number willing to vote for other Republican candidates on the ballot but not for President Trump, are the reasons his campaign fell short, not a fraudulent election. 

 Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. We do not claim that election administration is perfect. Election fraud is a real thing; there are prosecutions in almost every election year, and no doubt some election fraud goes undetected. Nor do we disparage attempts to reduce fraud. States should continue to do what they can do to eliminate opportunities for election fraud and to punish it when it occurs. But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct. It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate. 

 In the past 30 years, those tasked with administering our elections have helped create a modern election system in which we can and should have confidence. In all fifty states and at the national level there are transparent recount and election contest procedures designed to allow candidates to investigate and litigate claims of voter fraud and corruption. Those procedures have been tested in every presidential election since at least 2000 and have been found in every instance to be sound and reliable. The Trump Campaign and its supporters had full access to these remedies and used them in 64 proceedings in the states we examine, and in each instance, their claims of fraud and miscount failed. Our review of each of these Trump charges affirms that the 2020 election was administered by trained professionals who reaffirmed their established track record for fairness. 

The performance of the system in 2020 was all the more remarkable because of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which precipitated changes on an unprecedented scope and timeline. Some of those changes may have created possibilities for fraud, but there is no evidence that those risks materialized in reality; nor did they result in dampening voter participation—quite the opposite. Nonetheless, moving forward, the states should redouble their efforts to strengthen the integrity of our voting systems and make it as easy to vote and as hard to cheat as possible for persons of every circumstance. 

We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.
The full text of the report is here.


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