The true believers continue their crusade. It really does defy logic.

I noticed on Twitter (the social media site that no-one calls X) that an author I used to respect was posting “data” showing how the 2020 US presidential election was stolen. In this case it was 17,000 dead people voting in Michigan.

Maybe I have worked on too many election campaigns to be impressed. In the 19th century there was a fair amount of election fraud. Same with the early 20th century. There were cases where certain American precincts (and probably some Canadian ones) would have a large number of ballots “cast” by people who were dead.

Which is probably why the current claims have been made. There is historical precedent. But those in charge of voting have learned the lessons of history, at least in this case.

Voting has changed since the days when only men had the franchise. Casting the ballot of a dead person isn’t easy. To have a crew of willing fraudsters do it 17,000 times would be truly impressive. Anyone that organized could probably win the election without voter fraud.

But of course, these dead people didn’t show up at the polls. They mailed their ballots in before they died. How do we know that? Because mail-in ballots were checked to make sure they were valid. Those identified as coming from people who had died after mailing in their vote were never counted.

The number of dead voters being claimed is inflated of course, because if you are going to lie you might as well make it a big one. Politicians learned that in last century. Yell loud enough and people will start believing you, no matter how preposterous your claims. Donald Trump learned from the best, or maybe the worst.

I would have thought that by 2023 Trump’s stolen election lie would have gone the way of the dodo. That it is still hanging around shows how critical thinking has vanished. Apparently many Americans no longer care about truth or the damage they are doing to their country by perpetuating a lie.

People are willing to believe a lie because they don’t like the truth. In a society influenced by post-modernism it is no surprise therefore that followers of one political party or another won’t accept the hard facts. (That those on the other side politically, using the same thinking, frequently have an inability to accept biology is something I’ll save for a future post.)

Three years after the election, the Trump forces, and the Republican Party they are ostensibly part of, have yet to bring forward a person who admits to having committed the election fraud they are claiming took place. They maintain crimes happened, but they can find no criminals.

Fox News, who have had a huge role in spreading the lie, settled a lawsuit out of court for $787 million rather than face a trial that could have cost them billions. That hiccup hasn’t deterred the deniers. Since their candidate couldn’t have lost, there must have been fraud.

As a student of politics, I have read about election fraud and stolen elections in many countries. The 2020 American election doesn’t fit the pattern.

In a stolen election, those in power use that power to manipulate the outcome of the vote. When you control the voting apparatus it is easy enough to manipulate the numbers. For an example, look at the 2018 Egyptian presidential election, where the “winner” received more than 97 per cent of the votes cast.

Or look at Russia, where the current president has a habit of jailing of your opponents before election day. That certainly curtails their ability to campaign.

I guess Donald “lock her up” Trump couldn’t figure out how he could do that to Joe Biden. At least not in a way to make himself look like anything other than a tinpot dictator.

Donald Trump was the incumbent and lost the 2020 election. If anyone was in a position to commit massive electoral fraud, it should have been him. That he lost shows what Americans thought of him. That he remains a possible candidate for 2024, and indeed is the frontrunner, shows that Americans have lost their collective mind.

If Trump is himself jailed before next November, a possibility as he is facing felony charges in multiple jurisdictions, it will be because in an open court process he will have been found guilty of a crime or crimes. But the legal process takes time, and I am sure Trump’s legal team can stretch things out another year, in the hope that if convicted he will pardon himself.

After three years of trying and dozens of court battles lost, Trump and his team have yet to come up with any evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. At some point you would think the truth might sink in that he was beaten fair and square.

The lesson I learned here is that I should stay away from Twitter. There’s just too much lying going on.