Written By: Anton Sawyer
Election Fraud & 2022 Midterms; What We Can Expect, Guaranteed
As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, I feel that the 2022 US midterm elections are going put the Republican party in the majority of at least the Senate—and the House is looking to be up for grabs in some locations as well. No, this prediction has little to do with the current administration’s policies—though I must admit that Biden definitely isn’t helping the Democrats with how his first two years have gone—but rather with the perception of the election process itself.
Having watched how the Republican party began their rumblings of election fraud in both 2016 and 2020, along with how those same talking points are already making the rounds in 2022, it looks like America is setting itself up for more of the same. That’s what the article today is going to look at. The specific deceptions being used by the GOP in shading the entire election as rigged from the get-go, the history of them using this as a misdirection versus reality, and how the entire election fraud push is going to look in the future.
In an attempt to maintain complete transparency, all research and statistical fact-checking for all articles can be found in the bibliography linked here.
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Those who believe Fox News and use them as their only source of information have been taught their time would be better spent at home instead of going to the polls and voting since the liberals have already won due to fraud. I know this is painting with broad strokes, but as someone who listens to a lot of conservative talk radio, this concept has been presented in a thousand different ways, all leading to the same endgame: true democracy for conservatives is dead. To find out where this lie began, you have to look at ex-President Donald Trump … a decade ago.
Until Trump made it a part of his stump speeches during the 2016 election—thereby becoming a part of the 24-hour news cycle dedicated to him specifically—there had never been a spotlight (or such wide-ranging acceptance) towards the concept of a stolen election before in US history. Even by its use in 2016, this talking point had already become a time-tested deception. Four years prior, on election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was re-elected, Trump said that the election was a “total sham” and a “travesty,” while also claiming that the United States is "not a democracy" after Obama secured his victory. Trump wrote on Twitter, "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
The main difference is that in 2012, Trump was an old man yelling at shadows to anyone who followed the reality star. In 2016, he was the Republican nominee for the most powerful position in the world. This change in dynamics allowed his 2012 sentiment of fraud to have additional weight added by piling on the unflinching support from the entire GOP; it was believed by all from the common man to those with power in Washington. Swiftly, the level of saturation to this lie was at a zenith, and every Republican in America was convinced that if Trump didn’t win in 2016, then there was irrefutable fraud. Even if Trump did, as he once said, shoot somebody in the street, that wouldn’t make a difference in the outcome. If he lost, then someone is cooking the books to ensure that Clinton would be the “anointed one”—no matter what Trump said or did.
It was interesting to watch all this hyperbole fall by the wayside once Trump beat Clinton. The tone of the campaign immediately shifted to the American people making the right decision, and then the controversy went into the shadows until the 2020 election started shifting gears. As we know, though the cries of fraud were still being set up as a fallback like they were in 2016, the outcome of 2020 was much different. But let’s put that election cycle on hold for a moment, I promise I will return to it.
The 2022 midterm elections, though not presidential in scope, have already begun getting this treatment of supposed fraud as before. Though there have been a few candidates running for various positions (i.e., House, Senate, Governor) which have come out to make comments about the potential for election tampering, there is one specific plan that has been proposed from a candidate in the state of Wisconsin that is easily the most egregious.
While announcing his bid for Wisconsin’s governorship in early February, Republican Representative Timothy Ramthun vowed to conduct a "full forensic audit" of the 2022 race—regardless of who wins. "I'm going to do a full forensic physical cyber audit of the 2022 gubernatorial election, no matter the outcome of this year's elections. I want everything to be revisited and reviewed," Ramthun said. It’s worth noting that Ramthun's focus on election audits came while attempting to lead an effort in the Wisconsin GOP to overturn the state's 2020 election results in Trump's favor. A month before his announcement, he proposed a resolution to "reclaim" and revoke Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes, which lawyers and experts have said will be an impossible feat.
This preliminary re-count plan has all of the stench accompanying the rotten meat aspects found in their giant nothing-burger of 2020 when they did the last round of audits. Not only did it cost taxpayers of each municipality/state tens of millions of dollars, but the results changed nothing. When it comes to real election fraud versus perceived election fraud, the numbers are not in the favor of the GOP.
An Associated Press review of every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump has found fewer than 475 incidents of fraud—a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and their 79 Electoral College votes by a combined 311,257 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast for president. The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states. This review was a process that took months and encompassed more than 300 local election offices and is one of the most comprehensive examinations of suspected voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It relies on information collected at the local level, where officials must reconcile their ballots and account for discrepancies, and includes a handful of separate cases cited by secretaries of state and state attorneys general.
When you see just how little was accomplished by these constant (and costly) re-counts, it doesn’t make sense as to why Ramthun would come right out of the gate telling his potential constituents that he’s going to waste millions of their tax dollars. Then you remember that it’s the GOP; facts, self-awareness, and any memory of historical precedent are out the window. Because there’s still this disconnect present, when asked about the 2020 audits and final results, there are many Republicans who feel that there still may be something worth investigating.
"I think that there's a big question mark there," Cobb County Republican Party Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs said about the 2020 results. Keep in mind, ballots were counted three times, each time showing Biden won Georgia. Grubbs continued, "There were many things that were not done properly, whether it was a with a mal-intent or whether it was through error." As any good Republican would do in toeing the party line, Grubbs has encouraged those with concerns about 2020 to play a more active role in the midterms by helping to turn out voters or volunteering as poll watchers. These same sentiments and actions are taking place county after county across the fruited plain.
By using an extreme version of reverse psychology, the more frequently conservative media tells their followers that the election is already pre-determined, the more likely it’s going to cause them to arrive in droves at voting booths. These alarmists who are like Grubbs will physically do whatever is possible to ensure a “clean and fair” election. This is why I believe that the GOP will win the Senate, and maybe the House; fear will make a lot of people do things that are oftentimes against their best interest. Logically, we know that due to the law of averages not every election is going to go the way the GOP would like. So, what then of those elections which are clearly rigged because the conservative candidate didn’t win?
I think we all know the answer.
I’ve already taken a deep dive into the January 6th insurrection before, so I'm not going to rehash that here. What I do want to bring to light is how sickening the GOP response has been when it came to acquitting Trump of the charges brought on him from that day. I feel that the response Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had when discussing his vote to acquit the ex-President exemplifies not only how the rest of the party feels perfectly, but it’s also one of the most disturbing pieces of double-talk I’ve ever heard. "There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of [January 6th]," McConnell said. "The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth." McConnell was able to say all of this with a straight face while absolving Trump of those same actions.
It’s statements and attitudes like that which make me believe that if the children don’t get their way, they’ll throw another deadly tantrum.
Due to Trump being acquitted of any wrongdoing surrounding the insurrection, and the milquetoast response by Republicans across the board when it comes to holding someone accountable for the events of that fateful day, it’s telling their followers that the insurrection was bad but had nothing to do with their party. That those who were a part of the insurrection were just some “bad apples.” And so long as the finger-pointing continues towards those who go out and perpetrate any crimes based on bad GOP information, then it allows the base to stay resolute in the fact that their platform (especially concerning election fraud) had nothing to do with those heathens. I understand that as petulant children, admitting defeat while playing their favorite game is soul-crushing and therefore an impossibility for the Republicans to recognize. But in this case, the last time a tantrum was thrown, people were shot and killed.
Hopefully, this time, if these children lose “cops and robbers,” the cops will only have rubber bullets.
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