In the months leading up to the election, Donald Trump and his Republican allies relentlessly warned of widespread voter fraud. Trump accused Democrats of trying to steal the election by cheating, and he repeatedly refused to accept the election results unless he won.
On Election Day, Trump further amplified these claims, suggesting there was voter fraud in Philadelphia and Detroit, two major battleground cities. Elon Musk’s “Election Integrity Community” discussion page on X was also full of conspiracy theories about Democratic cheating.
But on election night, when the results appeared to be in Trump’s favor, the claims diminished. Instead of dark warnings about election fraud, the messages on X’s “election integrity” page became complacent and “the urgency to investigate misconduct waned,” The Washington Post reported. Far-right channels on the Telegram platform, where there have been many allegations of voter fraud in recent days, also suddenly went silent, according to The New York Times.
Most importantly, there was no more voter fraud by Trump, who spent months sowing doubt about the integrity of the 2024 presidential election — and who to this day refuses to concede the 2020 election.
After the race for Trump was called early Wednesday, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud also grew among the left, many of which centered on accusations that votes were missing for Kamala Harris. (As of Thursday morning, votes are still being counted in several states, including California, Washington and Alaska, as well as the battleground states of Nevada and Arizona.) But these claims have not been endorsed or amplified by Democratic officials. Harris also struck a very different tone in her concession speech on Wednesday than Trump did on election night four years ago.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy,” she said, “is that when we lose an election, we accept the outcome.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
