This election has been a garbage fire. November has been a nonstop stream of anger and false information, especially on one particular subject. Voter Fraud. It’s a word that’s being thrown around very loosely in idle conversation. Almost no political conversation is conducted without it’s mentioning. I have come to hate this phrase. Whichever way you lean, you should be aware of just how harmful this statement is in this election. This article is not written by a Democrat or a Republican or any other party, but as a citizen concerned about the delegitimization of the American people’s voice. The biggest threat to democracy this month is not voter fraud as an action, but as a talking point that directly ignores all facts in favor of the claims of a losing campaign.

Voter fraud is the act of falsifying votes to change an election. This used to run rampant. Elections could be completely changed by simply putting on a different suit and entering the polls again, or by political groups harassing opponents from voting. This is not how Joe Biden won the election.

Let’s start with fraud within counting centers. Multiple pictures and videos have surfaced of voting centers who have covered their m windows so that citizens cant see inside. This
is a lie. In fact, in the videos and pictures that are used to argue this, open windows and press boxes can be seen. On top of that, some of these facilities have publicly available live streams that show the inner working of the process. Doesn’t seem very secretive to me.

Speaking of live streams, one of these was also used as an attack on the process. Recently a video has surfaced of a ballot counter taking blank ballots, filling in votes, and then putting them in a box to be counted. Rock solid evidence right? Wrong. This video was purposely manipulated to make it appear like fraud, but if you were to watch the original sample you would see two people watching her, one Republican and one Democrat that are allowed inside these facilities to make sure everything is on the up and up. They find nothing wrong in this lady’s action. Why? Because she is doing her job. Sometimes ballots are put into counting machines and become damaged. When they get damaged they are not read by the machine. So to correct this, these are replaced with identical ballots and put back into the machine. This is a common occurrence.

Now let’s get into the ballots themselves. Due to Covid-19, there has been a surge in the use of mail-in voting. Republicans did not trust this system. They were told that it wasn’t a secure way to vote, as their ballot might be thrown out. So what did they do? They voted in person. So when it came time to count up the votes, the mail-ins came in blue after blue after blue. Trump’s campaign said this was obvious proof of fraud. This line of thinking makes no sense. They told everyone not to mail-in, meaning the people who did mail-in were mostly not republicans. Seems pretty obvious. Then Republicans started to point to how a state would be red, and then suddenly overnight the state would turn blue. This was because of votes being delivered by (drum roll please) mail, which is obviously slower. So of course in-person votes (red votes) would come in first and then a load of mail-ins (blue votes) would arrive.

Finally, let’s talk about the most understandable way people think fraud is happening. I’m sure you’ve heard “Did you know there were more votes than voters this year?” For a while I believed this, then I finally found where they were getting this fact. Really, there were more votes Nov. 3, than there were registered voters in August. Depending on the state people live in, they can register until the day they vote. This means the number of voters registered in August would be drastically lower than what it would be in November. In fact, if you look at current data you will see that no state has reported more votes than registered voters after Nov. 3.

Now, I’m not saying voter fraud doesn’t exist anymore. There have been a few proven cases of voter fraud this election, but these numbers are not nearly high enough to show mass fraud stole the election. The real fraud this year has been misinformation. Spreading lies and mistrust. Claiming that the voice of the people is really a fabrication. No matter what party, if you want people to vote for your side, telling them that their decision is a lie is not the way to do it.