In an interview earlier this week, Donald Trump was asked how he would win Nevada, given that he lost it twice. His response: “I think I won the last time. I think I won both times by a lot. This is a state that is disgraceful. . . . They robbed the vote.”
Steve Sisolak would like a word. He’s the state’s former Democratic governor who narrowly lost his reelection bid in 2022. If Nevada really does engage in mass voter fraud to prevent Republicans from winning statewide, that system failed to save the sitting Democratic governor. Surely Governor Sisolak could have wrung another 15,000 votes or so out of the Nevada fraud machine?
It’s these types of inconsistencies that make mass-fraud claims so unlikely. Consider also where Trump’s 2020 support eroded relative to 2016. His slippages in supposed hotbeds of fraud such as Milwaukee and Atlanta were tiny, and he actually improved in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, he declined badly in New Hampshire, a civic-oriented state that seems among the least likely to pull any shenanigans.
Calvert County, Md., where I live, is another good example. It’s a Washington, D.C., exurb with a well-educated population and no cities. All five county commissioners are Republicans. Trump won here by 17 points in 2016, but he won by just six points in 2020. What explains the decline? That my county suddenly fell victim to mass voter fraud aimed at undermining Trump is not plausible to me. Much more plausible is that well-educated moderates shifted decisively against him. It happened in Calvert, it happened in New Hampshire, and it happened in the nation at large.
Which is not to say that loosening election rules in 2020 was benign. For reasons of efficiency, security, preservation of the secret ballot, and litigation avoidance, we should return to a system where most people vote in person on Election Day. But it’s possible to believe that and not get bogged down in Trump’s fantasies about what happened in 2020.