November 13, 2020, 7:44 am
Amidst all of President Trump’s utterly baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud that he continues to push in a desperate attempt to claw his way back into the White House, a group of election officials have declared the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
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A joint statement from a group of officials sought to reassure Americans about the security of the election process, in direct contrast to the claims coming from Trump and his loyalists.
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“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the statement began. “Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.”
The note went on to explain that all of the states with results close enough to trigger a recount have “paper records fo each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary.” This is made possible, in part, by the record mail-in voting that happened this year.
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It also serves to ward off fears that any electronic voting system changed or deleted a large number of votes, a conspiracy theory pushed by President Trump earlier this week.
“Dominion deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide,” read an unfounded claim from One America News Network (OAN) and repeated by Trump.
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OAN appears to have made the claim based on a single error that occurred in one county in Michigan and was quickly corrected.
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Antrim County was called for Joe Biden on election night, but it was a human error that switched the vote tallies, and in actuality, Trump had more votes in the county. Rudy Giuliani wrongly claimed it was an error made by the software system used at the voting booths, Dominion, and subsequently assumed it was a widespread issue. OAN seems to have then applied the numbers to nationwide voting, in some way or another, to come up with the inane claim that 2.7 million votes for Trump had been deleted.
Though it has repeatedly been debunked that the Michigan issue had anything to do with the software, or that Dominion caused widespread mistakes throughout the country, the allegations continue to be spread by Trump and his supporters.
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Benjamin Hovland, the chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, shared his personal frustrations with the spread of misinformation with The New York Times.
“Because of this politically motivated rhetoric, these baseless accusations, you’re seeing harassment of election officials, you’re seeing threats toward elections officials — completely unacceptable. We’ve seen these accusations time and time again. We’ve seen them by this president from the very start,” he said.
Hovland also added that with the allegations, “what you see happening right now is playing right into the hands of our foreign adversaries who want to see us lose faith in our democracy.”
But he and the other election officials who have touted this as the most secure election in American history want to see that faith restored, as there has been absolutely no reasonable evidence to back the claims of widespread fraud of any kind.
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“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should do,” their statement concludes. “When you have questions, turn to election officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”
*First Published: November 13, 2020, 7:44 am
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