Republicans are trying to rig 2024 the way they claim 2020 was rigged

There are two theories that allies of Donald Trump promote to assert that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate.

The first is that rampant fraud — maybe with mail-in ballots, maybe from voting machines, maybe both, maybe something else — resulted in Joe Biden earning more votes nationally and in the states he flipped from 2016. This theory suffers from the minor flaw that there is no evidence in favor of it and lots of evidence against it. It also suffers from the secondary flaw that the lack of evidence means that those who most loudly adhere to it are often those with whom reputable people are the least interested in associating.

So the second theory gained traction. It holds that the election was illegitimate because a number of ancillary things shifted the results: late changes to election rules, including some that let more people vote early (meaning, the argument goes, more Democrats); big donors helping fund election administration; social media companies putting their thumb on the scales, including by (briefly) limiting the sharing of a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter. In short, the election was “rigged” for Biden not by direct cheating but by indirect influence, and that made all the difference.

There are a few benefits here. One is that it’s essentially unfalsifiable; you can’t flatly disprove vague claims about influence. Another is that it separates the presenter from the disreputable characters alleging fraud and from being tied to the already false claims about illegal voting. It also allows you, a Republican and/or Trump supporter, to lament how The System weighed in on behalf of Biden in an unacceptable way.

Such voices are noticeably quiet now that it’s Republicans who are doing the rigging.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/07/republicans-are-trying-rig-2024-way-they-claim-2020-was-rigged/