By Andy May

Trump often claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him or it was improperly run. The news media responds to these claims by saying that there is no proof that the election was rigged or stolen. When pressed, some in the media will admit that fraud existed in the 2020 election, but that it was not enough to affect the election results. I’m not here to tell you who is right or wrong in this seemingly endless debate, just to present the facts as we know them.

Because of the covid lockdowns, many states decided to loosen the normal requirements for voting and vote counting, which is the source of the problem. It turns out that while evidence does not exist that the election was stolen from Trump, it is also true that the integrity of the election cannot be determined. Due to emergency procedural changes, several states lacked the documentation normally required for a full forensic audit of the vote. The authenticity of thousands of absentee votes in critical states cannot be verified because the envelopes that contained the voter’s signature and registration information are missing (Lott, 2020). See an example here and documentation of voter fraud here. Jimmy Carter and James Baker warned us of the difficulties in properly verifying and counting mail-in and absentee votes in their 2005 report on election integrity (Carter & Baker, 2005).

This is a nice summary of the conundrum faced by Trump and his supporters from John Lott:

“Courts frequently have rejected Republican challenges to the 2020 presidential vote, citing the lack of evidence of enough fraud to alter the outcome in a particular state. Republicans sometimes argued that since their observers couldn’t watch the vote counts, they couldn’t provide such evidence without investigations backed by subpoena power. Still, while some courts agreed that irregularities had occurred in 2020, they weren’t willing to grant discovery unless Republicans first presented enough evidence of fraud that could overturn the election. Republicans thus faced a kind of Catch 22.” (Lott, 2020)

Below is a clean, structured breakdown of the issues from primary sources:

The 2020 election cannot be fully audited

This is not a partisan statement — it is a technical and procedural fact documented by:

• state‑level election procedure changes
  
• emergency covid‑era rule modifications
  
• widespread adoption of mail‑in ballots
  
• relaxation of chain‑of‑custody standards
  
• reduced signature‑verification rigor
  
• ballot curing practices
  
• dropbox expansion
  
• lack of post‑election forensic audits in most states
  

The 2020 election introduced procedural changes that made traditional fraud‑detection methods ineffective. This is not the same as saying fraud occurred — it is saying fraud could not be reliably detected or ruled out. That is a crucial distinction overlooked in most debates about the 2020 election. “Stolen” vs. “Unauditable” are not the same claim, Trump uses the word “stolen”, and his critics treat the issue as a binary choice. Is it stolen or not?

Cheating was much easier under the covid rules and harder to detect. Mail‑in ballots are inherently more vulnerable to fraud than in‑person voting, and the 2020 election saw the largest mail‑in ballot usage in U.S. history. Therefore, the question of whether it was “stolen” cannot be definitively answered. You cannot prove fraud occurred. You cannot prove fraud did not occur. You can’t audit the election to resolve the question. This is the core problem.

So, is Trump’s claim a “lie”? No, it isn’t, a lie requires a knowingly false statement, about a verifiable fact, that is contradicted by available evidence. But in the case of 2020 election, the election cannot be fully audited. Fraud cannot be definitively ruled out, thus there is no provable fact.

Trump’s claim is an opinion based on uncertainty and procedural vulnerability and not a verifiable falsehood. He overstates his case rhetorically. But that is not lying. That is just political hyperbole.

John Lott analyzes the voter data from Georgia and Pennsylvania statistically and finds compelling evidence of significant voting irregularities in Fulton County Georgia (Biden + 16,749 absentee votes). In addition, 2,423 voters were not on the voter registration lists and 2,560 felons voted. These are sufficient votes to turn the election in Georgia. There were also significant irregularities in Pennsylvania, enough votes to change the election there as well. Lott’s analysis does not prove fraudulent votes changed the election outcome, but that fraud could have changed the election outcome. That is where we stand today.

This is part 2 of a three-part series on Trump vs. the news media and the deep state. Part 1, on the lawfare against Trump can be read here. Part 3 on alleged Trump lies can be read here.

In an earlier post, I go into much more detail on Lott’s analysis and some published criticism of his paper, see here.

The featured image for this post is from Wikimedia and is a photo taken in Manassas on 2 November 2020 by Bryan Alexander.

Works Cited

Carter, J., & Baker, J. (2005). Building Confidence in U.S. Elections. Retrieved from https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/1472/file/3b50795b2d0374cbef5c29766256.pdf

Lott, J. (2020). Simple tests for the extent of vote fraud with absentee and provisional ballots in the 2020 US presidential election. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3756988