An election integrity expert’s response to ‘Stolen election vs. unfair election’

This opinion piece by former US Senate candidate Mick Rich asks the question: “Was the 2020 Presidential election stolen from Donald Trump, or was the 2020 presidential election unfair to Donald Trump? There is a difference between the two, and that difference is essential for Americans in future elections.”  This premise presents a false dichotomy that assumes that the election can be unfair or stolen, but not both. In reality, an election can be both unfair and stolen.

Acknowledging the election was unfair is itself an acknowledgment that it was stolen if the party that played unfairly was given the victory on a razor-thin margin, as occurred in the 2020 presidential election. Trying to separate fairness from theft is a dangerous attempt to force Americans to accept unfair elections as legitimate elections. No election based on censorship, fake scandals propped up by corrupt government actors and the media, and hundreds of millions of dollars of private money being used to influence how we vote should be viewed as legitimate. Using the words “stolen election” under such circumstances is completely appropriate.

Mr. Rich inaccurately describes the people who believe elections are being stolen as “Trump supporters.” Multiple polls have shown that between 60 and 70 percent of Americans believe our elections are affected by widespread cheating, and not all those people are Trump supporters. In fact, it was Democrats who attempted to blow the whistle for many years on the vulnerability and hackability of the black box electronics that comprise our election system.  Many of these same Democrats are strangely silent on this topic now, but that doesn’t remove the fact that those who believe there is no widespread cheating are in an ever-shrinking minority.

Mr. Rich points to an AXIOS article that predicted a “false election day Trump win” as proof that the slow chipping away of Trump’s significant election night leads over days and weeks was somehow honestly done. Is Mr. Rich forgetting that the Twitter Files and recent US House hearings proved that the mainstream media has been colluding with leftist organizations and government agencies to manipulate the beliefs of Americans about COVID, the corruption of the Biden family, and the 2020 election? People who are powerful and corrupt enough to do those things are certainly smart enough to know they needed to establish primacy in the narrative by predicting what they were going to do in the swing states to make it appear normal and expected. In fact, they brazenly admitted that they were “working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information” in a  February 2021 Time Magazine article.  

There are plenty of eyewitness testimonies and video, mathematical, and statistical evidence that prove that Trump’s election day win was not honestly erased as AXIOS would have us believe. I suggest starting with this website, which contains a wealth of information on the massive amount of evidence that points to widespread fraud in elections all over the country, particularly in the swing states. Anyone who is intellectually honest and wants to continue denying that the 2020 election was stolen must deal with the substance of this evidence because they can’t honestly continue to parrot that it doesn’t exist.  

This statement in Mr. Rich’s article was an odd one: “Trump supporters believe there were enough close states that illegal activity associated with ballot harvesting could make a difference. However, without knowing which states will be ‘close enough,’ millions of ballots would have been created, destroyed, or changed across many states, and there is no evidence that happened.” This is a straw man. Anyone who has run for federal office is aware that tracking and predicting elections is big business. Any moderately competent campaign adviser will have reams of historical trends and current polling data to help their candidate target exactly which voters they need to contact to win the right precincts, to win the right counties, to win their election. It is known ahead of time exactly which counties any election will hinge on and by approximately how many votes. 

Before 2020, most of us assumed that this campaign targeting was typically being conducted in a fair and legal way, but now we are certain it is not. The tiny margins of “victory” in the handful of swing states that swung 2020 in favor of Biden do not amount to millions of votes, as Mr. Rich stated, but rather a few thousand. Could a few thousand votes have been inserted illegally in each of these swing states, either through ballot stuffing or digital manipulation? Yes, they could have. And the evidence suggests that’s exactly what happened. 

I would remind the readers that mainstream media has staunchly insisted over the last several years that conservative viewpoints were not being censored on any platform. They claimed no evidence existed to believe such a thing. They called in their experts and sponsored studies to make the people who knew their voices were being silenced look crazy. But Elon Musk’s Twitter Files and recent US House hearings have proven the media lied about censorship just like they lied about the Biden laptop and Russia collusion. It’s only a matter of time before they will be shown to be lying about widespread election fraud.  

In closing, I reject the false dichotomy of an unfair versus a stolen election. Unfair is stolen. But that’s not even the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that the vast majority of Americans believe the current electronic election system is not trustworthy and leaves the door open to widespread fraud. This is reason enough to reform our elections in a way that restores confidence. That means voter ID and a return to paper ballots that are hand-counted with bipartisan oversight at the precinct level. It means full transparency and accountability in every step of the process and the rejection of electronic black box voting machines.  

Wife, mother, engineer, and election integrity activist. You can find reports on elections in New Mexico written, in part, by Mrs. Clements here and here. 

Opinions expressed by Piñon Post contributors do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the publication or its editorial staff. Submit an op-ed to the Piñon Post at news@pinonpost.com.