"That sounds like the aftermath of the 2020 election, but it's also what's happening right now. Kamala Harris's loss in last November's presidential election produced few prominent claims of fraud, and nothing like the concerted effort, using both lawsuits and force, to keep President Donald Trump in office that followed his defeat nearly five years ago. In the past few months, however, spurious allegations that fraud helped Trump win back the White House have been flourishing more online, elections experts told me,"
"The parallel to fraud theories about the 2020 presidential election is more than superficial, Justin Grimmer, a political scientist at Stanford who has studied election-conspiracy theories, told me. "The most remarkable thing is the similarity in the analysis that we're seeing from the bad claims made after 2020 and these similarly bad, really poorly set up claims from 2024," he said."
Partisan allegations of electoral fraud resembling those after 2020 have reemerged following the 2024 presidential contest. Kamala Harris's loss initially generated few high-profile fraud claims, but recent months have seen spurious assertions that fraud delivered victory to Donald Trump proliferate online. Political scientists and elections experts identify striking similarities between the new claims and the debunked analyses from 2020, citing comparable methodological flaws, thin sourcing, and recycled narratives that previously fed lawsuits and forceful attempts to overturn results. Conspiracy-friendly outlets and anonymous newsletters have circulated specific allegations—such as an alleged NSA audit and a purported former CIA operative's account—despite weak or nonexistent evidence.
Read at The Atlantic
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