Before I even start to talk about the 2024 election, I think it’s important to talk about the 2020 election - after all, election fraud was MAGA’s calling card - so why is this different?
Well, let’s look at the claims made after the 2020 Election.
With 158.4 million ballots cast in 2020 - marking the highest voter turnout rate since 1900 - exhaustive investigations found virtually no evidence of widespread fraud. The Heritage Foundation’s own database - which it calls a “sampling” of proven cases - lists fewer than 1,700 instances of voter fraud going back to 1982.
We were assured that our elections were safe and our systems were proven remarkably resilient under historic levels of scrutiny. Multiple audits and recounts - including Georgia’s hand count - demonstrated no evidence of vote manipulation. The machines’ accuracy rates consistently matched paper ballot counts - effectively disproving claims of algorithmic vote switching.
Then there was stuff like the dead voter theory, which collapsed under scrutiny. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee checked a list of more than 200 Wayne County voters said to be dead - it found just two real cases, one a clerical error and one a timing issue, and no fraud. The few legitimate cases typically involved clerical errors or isolated incidents of relatives using a deceased person’s ballot. The handful of actual cases usually involved someone casting a ballot for a dead relative - a mother, a wife - which is touching but illegal.
Mail-in voting - despite unprecedented scrutiny - showed remarkably low fraud rates. States with established mail-in voting systems provided compelling data. Oregon - which implemented universal mail-in voting in 1998 - reported just 38 voter fraud convictions out of about 61 million ballots cast from 2000 to 2019.
The Dominion voting machine conspiracy proved equally baseless. Multiple audits and recounts - including Georgia’s hand count - demonstrated no evidence of vote manipulation. The machines’ accuracy rates consistently matched paper ballot counts - effectively disproving claims of algorithmic vote switching.
But where did these claims originally come from?
After the election, as results showed, Joe Biden was in the lead, and claims began circulating on social media and some conservative news platforms. One of the earliest and most prominent proponents of this theory was Sidney Powell, a lawyer associated with the Trump campaign at the time. Powell made sensational claims during media appearances and in legal filings that there was an algorithm designed to switch votes from Trump to Biden, particularly focusing on Dominion Voting Systems.
Powell appeared on Fox News in November 2020, alleging that Dominion Voting Systems was created to produce altered voting results in Venezuela for Hugo Chávez and that it had been used to rig the U.S. election for Biden. She mentioned specific algorithms and vote-switching mechanisms without providing substantial evidence.
The claim was amplified by various figures, including Rudy Giuliani, another Trump attorney, and through social media, where it was shared widely by Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists.
But here’s the thing - the IMPORTANT THING - the THING to remember:
There was no evidence of this. None.
So, where did this idea come from?
Sidney Powell’s claim about algorithmic vote switching in the 2020 election primarily seems to have been influenced by a mix of conspiracy theories, misinformation, and a few specific sources:
Powell was deeply embedded in the right-wing conspiracy theory ecosystem. Her claims resonate with long-standing myths about electronic voting systems, including those that surfaced after previous elections where similar accusations were made but never substantiated.
Powell’s association with QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group, also played a significant role. QAnon followers were promoting the same kind of voting-machine fraud theories at the same time. Her engagement with this community likely influenced her rhetoric.
Powell later helped raise money for the controversial 2021 audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, which was influenced by conspiracy theories about voting machines. This audit, however, did not find evidence of algorithmic vote switching. Powell also cited affidavits from individuals like Navid Keshavarz-Nia, who claimed to have knowledge of voting machine manipulations. However, these affidavits were largely dismissed due to a lack of verifiable evidence or because the claims were based on speculation rather than concrete proof.
During interviews, Powell often spoke about having “evidence” but never produced it publicly in a way that could stand up to legal or scientific scrutiny. She appeared on conservative media outlets like Fox News, where she made these claims without providing detailed sources. Powell’s legal filings in various states included allegations of vote-switching algorithms, but these were based on hearsay, speculative theories, and affidavits from individuals who often had no direct connection to the actual voting systems or were discredited. There was also confusion or misrepresentation around patents related to voting technology. Powell and others cited patents as if they were evidence of nefarious capabilities, but these patents actually dealt with security features or were unrelated to vote-switching.
In the end, numerous courts rejected her claims, noting a lack of evidence, which indirectly illuminates the baselessness of her assertions.
The many other legal challenges tell the same story. Trump’s campaign and supporters filed 62 lawsuits challenging the election results. They lost 61, often facing dismissal due to a lack of evidence. Many of these cases collapsed when lawyers - required to present actual evidence in court - couldn’t substantiate their public claims of fraud.
But let’s think this through.
Someone had to be pretty convincing to get all of these lawyers to file these lawsuits without evidence, and many people ended up being punished for doing it. Nine lawyers were sanctioned for a lawsuit filed in Michigan. They were required to pay $175,000 in legal fees and undertake 12 hours of mandatory legal education. In Colorado, two lawyers, Ernest Walker and Gary Fielder, were sanctioned with a penalty of $187,000 for a frivolous lawsuit. In Arizona, three attorneys, Andrew Parker, Kurt Olsen, and Alan Dershowitz, faced sanctions over a 2022 lawsuit that tried to ban electronic voting machines.
The 65 Project, a group aiming to hold attorneys accountable for trying to overturn the election, targeted at least 111 lawyers for potential disbarment and other disciplinary actions. While not all of these lawyers have been confirmed to have been punished as of the latest information, it indicates a broader scope of legal professionals potentially facing consequences.
Then there’s what happened to Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. In June 2021, Giuliani’s law license was suspended by a New York state appellate court for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” about voter fraud in the 2020 election. In July 2024, he was officially disbarred in New York State. He was also disbarred in Washington, D.C., in September 2024.
Giuliani was also found liable for defamation in a lawsuit by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, whom he falsely accused of election fraud. In August 2023, he was ordered to pay nearly $133,000 in sanctions for non-compliance with discovery requests. In December 2023, a jury awarded Freeman and Moss $148 million in damages. Giuliani subsequently filed for bankruptcy, but the case was dismissed in July 2024, allowing creditors to pursue his assets. In January 2025, he settled with Freeman and Moss - he kept his homes, paid them an undisclosed amount and agreed not to defame them again.
And there’s a lot more - just google it.
Then there’s Sidney Powell, who was sanctioned by U.S. District Judge Linda Parker in August 2021 for a frivolous lawsuit filed in Michigan. She and other lawyers involved were ordered to pay over $175,000 in attorney fees and undergo legal education. Powell is also a defendant in Dominion’s ongoing $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit, and Smartmatic is suing her for defamation in a separate case in D.C.
Similar to Giuliani, Powell was indicted in August 2023 in Georgia for her alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, charged with racketeering and conspiracy - that October, she pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors and agreed to testify against the other defendants.
All of this due to a baseless theory?
It seems far-fetched to me.
Unless…
Someone embedded in that Q-Anon / Right-Wing movement targeted them…
BUT WAIT!
Am I about to go down some deep, dark hole to uncover another conspiratorial theory?
Absolutely Fucking Not.
I’m not going to waste your time with any of that nonsense.
Instead, my aim is to show you the evidence that Powell and Rudy could not produce - and that’s the data.
You see, you might have a good night at the casino, get lucky on a few games of Blackjack, and maybe even win a few games of three-card poker. But if you walk around that casino floor and hit on the Roulette table, then win at craps, baccarat, and pai gow - the pit boss will be walking you out of that casino. Because no one is that lucky. And the voting data shows that Trump somehow hit the jackpot over and over and over again.
So, I hope I have established 2 things.
- In my previous post about election integrity, I discussed why examining how these numbers happened in 2024 is extremely important - even if it turns out it isn’t a long-tail play by the Russians.
- The claims about the 2020 election and the 2024 election are not the same. The 2020 election fraud claims were based on unsubstantiated theories about how the election might have been rigged. These 2024 claims don’t attempt to establish a theory about how anomalies in the data happened. No one knows how they happened - it’s just an attempt to show people that they do factually exist. And hopefully, if enough people are convinced, then it will build up enough pressure to convince people that it’s something that needs to be figured out - one way or another.
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said Powell drew on claims from Arizona’s Maricopa County audit - that audit came in 2021, months after her claims, and she later helped raise money for it. It also said three Arizona lawyers were sanctioned for challenging the 2020 results - it was over a 2022 lawsuit to ban voting machines. It also said Powell was a defendant in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit - she was dropped from that case in 2022, and Smartmatic is suing her separately in D.C. It also said Oregon reported 14 attempted fraudulent votes - the state counts 38 fraud convictions out of about 61 million ballots from 2000 to 2019. And it said Michigan audited 250 dead voters and that the real cases were mostly widows - a Republican-led state Senate committee checked a list of over 200 and found two, neither one fraud, and the documented cases included a woman voting for her dead mother and a man voting for his dead wife.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say 2020 had the highest turnout rate since 1900, that Heritage calls its fraud database a sampling, that QAnon’s machine theories ran alongside Powell’s claims, and how things ended for Giuliani and Powell - his D.C. disbarment, his January 2025 settlement with Freeman and Moss, and her October 2023 guilty plea.
Now that I’ve said all that, I’ll let you ruminate on how these two different issues might correlate on your own. Next up for me will be to start talking about the numbers.
Sources:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/election_law/litigation