The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believe that President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was not legitimate has ticked back up, according to a new CNN poll fielded throughout July. All told, 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaners say Biden’s win was not legitimate, up from 63% earlier this year and through last fall, even as there is no evidence of election fraud that would have altered the outcome of the contest.
I vividly remember the 2004 voting machine issues. It was the first general election with widespread use of computerized voting software, in the wake of the 2000 election disaster, and there was a lot of evidence that the machines could be tampered with quite easily. I’m not sure if there is real evidence that they were actually tampered with, but the fact the machines were not open source and demonstrably falsifiable is in itself alarming.
I don’t recall any talk about the 2016 election being illegitimate. The results were horrifying obviously, and we were shocked the polls were so wrong, but actual fraud? I don’t think so.
Indeed. All the claims about Russian interference were that they used propaganda to push people to vote for Trump, not that the election itself was fraudulent. It’s ridiculous to compare “Hostile foreign actors are manipulating people” with “The outgoing president actually won the election and thus should remain in office despite all the evidence to the contrary.”