After the presidential election, there has been a lot of talk about the validity of the mail-in ballots that helped President-Elect Joe Biden win over President Donald Trump.

Now, as we all know the 2020 election was absolutely bonkers. Between Donald Trump declaring his victory before the election was even called (he didn’t even get 270 electoral votes) and Nevada taking forever to count their state’s ballots, things got heated fast. The election of Joe Biden has really got people pulling out the tin-foil hats– including Trump, who has gone far enough to start a Voter Fraud Hotline to crack down on alleged fraudulent ballots. Even back in April, President Trump was quoted saying that “mail-in ballots are very dangerous – there’s tremendous fraud involved,” at one of his rallies, according to the BBC. With that in mind, is it possible that he’s right?  Is President-Elect Joe Biden a cheater or the next leader of the United States? (Spoiler alert: Trump better start packing his bags.) 

Voter Fraud in 2016

For starters, voter fraud is exactly what it sounds like– fake votes used to rig and cheat an election. With mail-in ballots that’s when a ballot is NOT cast by whose name is written on the envelope, and in some cases they are under the names of people who are dead or not real at all, according to the Heritage Foundation. Donald Trump and his supporters believe that this has happened in large enough numbers to block him from winning the 2020 election, making him the 11th sitting president to lose reelection.

 In 2016, Trump made the same claim against Hillary Clinton (who didn’t even win the election, obviously), which was widely debunked according to The New York Times. “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he wrote (Why even say that? If he won, what’s the point?). Roughly 137.7 million people voted in the 2016 election, and the largest amount of alleged fraudulent votes in a state was in Tennessee with 40 votes, according to The New York Times. However, 49 states were inquired (minus Kansas) and it was found that none of them reported widespread fraud, meaning Trump’s 2016 claim is false. No surprises there, honestly.

Voter Fraud in 2020

So now we know Trump was a liar and a sore winner (???) four years ago. Now in the year 2020, he’s back to calling foul and it looks like he’s wrong again. He has made over 40 Facebook and Twitter posts claiming the election is rigged and has previously made false claims of ballots being “dumped into rivers” (again, ???) in the months before the election. 

Election officials (both Republicans and Democrats) have said that the election went well and that there was no evidence of widespread fraud, according to the Associated Press. However, since Donald Trump has blown the whistle on the idea of voter fraud, there has been rampant social media activity backing his claim that is, for the most part, false. For example, Trump’s son Eric claimed that the number of Wisconsin votes exceeds the population number. However, in Wisconsin 1,551,711 people voted which is only 45.8% of eligible WI voters, according to the Wisconsin Election Commission. 

On Twitter, it was circulated that a fraudulent ballot was cast in the name of a deceased woman named Donna Brydges in Michigan. However, Brydges is confirmed to be alive (after doing a phone interview with the Associated Press) and cast the ballot herself. The claim was based around an error in the Michigan Voter Registration Center that lists the year of birth in registrations in a way that makes it seem like the voter is dead. For Brydges, it was listed that she was born in 1901 which would make her 119 years old.

Every major news source has projected Joe Biden as the next president including FOX News, who usually goes with whatever wild claim or act President Trump has said/done in the last four years. Whether Trump likes it or not, this isn’t more “fake news” perpetuated by CNN or whoever he believes is out to get him now.

Donald Trump’s Tantrum

It’s safe to say that President Trump can’t handle losing the election and is now making it everyone else’s problem. He has fired the Secretary of Defense, refused to concede and recognize Biden as the president-elect (backed by Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who had to win his spot in the 2020 election as well, by the way), and has filed lawsuits against states he believes to be hiding evidence of voter fraud. He has even authorized the Department of Justice to investigate these claims, violating their policy to not meddle in electoral investigations until after the election is set in stone, according to The New York Times.

These events are leading people to believe that he is attempting a coup, which is a term for a sudden and unlawful seize of power. He is denying the election results and is desperately trying to get people to agree with him on that when it is a baseless, debunked claim so he can get another four years in the Oval Office.

While this might not necessarily be a full-on coup, it’s still a bad look for Trump and the country as a whole. Donald Trump is a liar and is openly throwing a tantrum but he is also the leader of our country, the figurehead of the United States, and he is making a mockery of us all.