Why I can believe that 2020 US elections may have been rigged?

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Aug 21, 2022 at 13:13

Dear Dr Pipes,

As my title to this message would indicate, I am not implying that the 2020 elections were rigged. I am just saying that the US presidential election and vote counting systems indeed make rigging elections possible. I will explain.

In the current system it is very well known that the US president is mainly decided by about 10 states in the middle of the nation. President Trump smartly and honestly exploited this situation to give a surprise last-minute defeat to Hillary Clinton in 2016. We all remember that Mr Trump campaigned only in 8 or 10 US states. Nothing wrong so far. Being strategically smart is no crime. Now let us think from the point of view of an election rigger.

The rigger knows fully well that no purpose will be served in cheating in any of the other 40 states; a few votes here and there won't make a difference. The rigger must cheat in one of the middle 10 states. But even that is a formidable task. If I want to wake up 10000 people to go and vote at the last minute, I would not know which 10000 people should I wake up in OH, MI, IL, GA, VA etc. But, here comes the twist.

Modern election reporting and statistical analysis makes my life easier. As a person who wants to rig the election, I can easily 'calculate' which precincts in which county and in which states, I must mobilize my volunteers to garner a few extra last minute votes or in which state I should cook-up a few last minute mail ballots. This is entirely possible using the modern statistical methods. A smart high schooler can do the modelling. I can even predict in which states and counties I must stop vote counting for a few hours to enable this rigging. The bottom line is that statistical methods and the current vote counting system, can exactly pinpoint where to rig.

I am not saying that democrats did this kind of rigging in 2020. I am just saying that mathematical analysis definitely makes it possible to identify which 100000 doors to knock at to swing the elections.

There are many ways to make this kind of rigging more difficult. For example, we can disallow county by county up-to-the-second reporting of results on the election night. We can also mandate that no state will start counting until all states have finished voting. We can mandate that the states will count or report at different pace so all states finish counting at about the same time. And, most importantly, it must be mandated that only those mail-ballots will be counted that arrive and are sealed by Oct 25th. It is your right to vote but it is also your duty to send your ballot well in-time!!

I know that to orchestrate this kind of rigging, a force of at least a few dozen participants will be needed and the word will eventually leak out but it is entirely possible to do it. If you had given me 100000 or so votes to mark as I wanted on the election night, in 2016 and 2020, I could have changed the results of the US presidential election results.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".