Will Republican Claims of Voter Fraud Ever End?

They’ve been doing it since 1876

Originally Published December 1st, 2022: Screaming about election fraud isn’t a new Republican tactic. They’ve been doing this (at times more successfully than others) since 1876. But Trump has taken it to new levels which are made even more dangerous with the expansion of instant communication over the internet.

In the 1876 U.S. presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Tilden had a clear majority of 51% of the vote to Hayes’s 48%. However, Tilden was one vote short in the Electoral College.

Inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes. Photo in Pubic Domain Library of Congres

Needless to say, the circus began. So bizarre was the political climate that on the night of the election, some crazies actually tried to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body in protest, which ranks right up there with the January 6th insurrection as an example of lunacy.

Republicans screamed voter fraud, and it took four months and a congressional committee stacked with their partisans to decide the election.

Hayes came out the winner and went on to a lackluster, corrupt time in office.

Believe it or not, it was easier to make the accusation of voter fraud stick in the good old days before instant internet communication. Election returns took a long time to count and news traveled slowly. News of political squabbles in the hallowed halls of Washington and state capitols was slow to get to everyday people in the far reaches of the Union.

In this electronic age, the news gets out so quickly that circumstances change even as the media starts reporting. People can know what’s happening instantly, even if they do tire too quickly of truth.

That doesn’t stop local candidates from shouting fraud whenever they lose an election. But here’s an experience that could spell the end of the strategy in the instant information age.

There’s an unintended consequence to screaming that the sky is falling.

In a local election in my town where the Democrat candidate won a town council seat for the first time in 30 years by a tiny margin, the Republican immediately screamed fraud. She even started to gain traction on local town websites and with an aggressive internet blast, until other Republicans who had won with slim margins quietly told her to keep her mouth shut for fear a recount would show they actually lost.

And, voters are paying attention.

This year, Republicans thought they were going sweep the mid-terms with a red wave that would set all things to right, but it ended up as more of a trickle than a tsunami. They grossly overestimated the level of ignorance in the elections by voters, in part because they believed their own polls and press releases.

History shows that underestimating the intelligence of the voters is never a winning strategy. Plainly, voters are beginning to see through all the energy spent on recounting election results that turn out to be correct in the first place. Accusations of voter fraud may well end in all but the most backward of these United States.

Time will tell.