This should be a no-brainer.
It's been three years since President Biden won the 2020 election.
The world has moved on.
Some people have not.
To the vast majority around the world, it's a complete non-issue. The only people who still believe Trump's Big Lie are fringe, Q-addled religious/white supremacist nuts, right? They'll wend their way back to reality eventually.
One would hope.
I am not sure that secular people around the world, who are able to clearly look at a set of facts and draw a reasonable conclusion, quite understand the alternate reality of alternative facts that white evangelical Christian nationalists are living in.
Or how dangerous it can be.
When highly politicized ideologues cling to a religiously-infused delusion, and believe God is on their side in pursuit of a huge lie, that happens to serve their prejudices and privilege and sense of exceptionalism.
You would think, after seeing the example of religious extremism and fundamentalism in Islam, we'd have a clue.
I grew up in this community. There are guys whose popular books sat on our bookshelf in our missionary flat in Hong Kong, now preaching that Christians need to prep for civil war.
I am reading what these prominent Evangelical leaders and prophets are saying. I am seeing what their followers are saying.
And I am seeing what their CHILDREN, brought up in the tradition in much the same way as myself ... are now saying about their famous parents and their millions of followers.
We hoped that reality would eventually set in and they would accept the outcome of the democratic process of their elections.
We hoped that after the debacle of the public tantrum of January 6th, they would be chastened and pull their heads in a bit.
But here we are, six months later, and the religious right are still doubling down on two huge, but vaguely related lies.
1. Male supremacy - women must submit to male authority.
2. Trump won the election, and the 2020 election was stolen, and Biden's presidency is illegitimate.
I notice on social media that there is amplification of both these lies, significantly, over recent months.
The first is the foundation for the second.
The second is because the first is so important to them.
This shouldn't be a conversation anyone needs to have, but I say this for two groups of people:
1. Devout, Christians who do not realise they're the targets of an anti-democratic disinformation campaign and who genuinely believe there was election fraud - and
2. Sincere secular people who struggle to believe that so many millions of reasonable, intelligent people could possibly believe such orchestrated delusion in the face of overwhelming fact and evidence.
So here goes.
Was there election fraud or not?
Here's what America's major institutions of electoral oversight have to say.
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.
“When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (which had an objective observer role):
OSCE supervises the votes that resulted in a win for Biden as well as the votes that resulted in a win for Republican senators. Following an official invitation, and in accordance with its mandate, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) deployed an election observation activity for the 3 November 2020 general elections in the United States. The mission assessed whether the elections were held in line with OSCE commitments and other international obligations and standards for democratic elections, as well as with national legislation. ODIHR had previously observed eight elections in the USA, most recently the mid-term elections in November 2018.
The OSCE has observed NINE presidential elections in the USA. Their comments on the 2020 U.S. election is illuminating.
OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
Highly competitive elections in US tarnished by legal uncertainty and unprecedented attempts to undermine public trust, international observers say
From the Brennan Center for Justice:
It’s Official: The Election Was Secure
These government officials, judges, and elected leaders, overwhelmingly Republican, have publicly acknowledged confidence in the November election.
Federal Agencies
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Department of Homeland Security – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
Department of Justice (DOJ)
U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The Courts
United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Wisconsin Supreme Court
Election Officials
Gabriel Sterling (R), Georgia’s Voting Systems Implementation Manager
Scott Schwab (R), Kansas Secretary of State
Kim Wyman (R), Washington Secretary of State
Lisa Posthumus Lyons (R), Kent County Clerk
Anything I post here from pretty much ANY news corporation that is subject to fact-checking and accountability, other than the "entertainment" shows that make no promise of fact, truth or evidence, such as Newsmax and OAN, will be roundly dismissed as "MSM lies" by the people of The Lie. That's a shame. But still no reason not to report facts.
Elected Officials
The list of lawsuits claiming election fraud (that were all, but one, dismissed for lack of evidence):
Post-election lawsuits related to the 2020 United States presidential election
It's the References at the bottom of the above Wikipedia page that you really want to comb through carefully.
The slow, painful death of Trump allies’ voting-machine conspiracy theories
Unfortunately for its proponents, these theories carried one very significant drawback: legal liability. While broad claims of voter fraud are relatively unspecific and involve many potential perpetrators, there are relatively few voting-machine companies. Claiming such things means impugning them specifically and creating a situation in which your baseless claims can lead to calculable personal and business harm, which is important when it comes to suing someone for defamation.
And sue they have. The result: Many if not most of the high-profile purveyors of such claims have since backed off."
Election Fraud Debunking Mega Thread by Ike Saul, 5 November 2020
Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud
December 2, 2020
"Disputing President Donald Trump’s persistent, baseless claims, Attorney
General William Barr declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department has
uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the
outcome of the 2020 election."
AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s claims of vote rigging are all wrong
Voter fraud is real, just not on the scale claimed by Trump
Nov 13, 2020
"All evidence points to voter fraud as local, small-scale and relatively rare — not national or assembly-line efficient. A dozen or so improperly obtained absentee ballots can conceivably tip a close local election, as was alleged to have happened in Stamford five years ago. It never has been pervasive or scalable.
Trump’s unsupported claim Thursday that 2.7 million votes were somehow deleted or altered in electronic voting systems provoked a remarkable rebuke from within his own administration about the president’s ignorance, willful or not, about how U.S. elections are conducted."
December 4, 2020
"Clinging to notions of widespread vote rigging that his own attorney general has disputed, President Donald Trump repeated a litany of baseless assertions Wednesday of political corruption, machine tampering and mysterious votes appearing out of nowhere that allowed Joe Biden to steal the election.
“This election is about great voter fraud, fraud that has never been seen like this before,” Trump said in a 46-minute address posted on social media."
“It’s about poll watchers who were not allowed to watch. So illegal. It’s about ballots that poured in and nobody but a few knew where they came from. ... It’s about machinery that was defective, machinery that was stopped.”
None of those assertions are true."
Member of Trump's voter fraud commission says lack of evidence 'reveals a troubling bias'
Many evangelicals cling to the lies about election fraud, because they cannot bear to face the reality that the prophets they have put their trust in could be wrong.
MY APOLOGY - U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PROPHECY 2020
Kris Vallotton, January 9, 2021
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