The baseless cries of voter fraud by failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake weren’t just a redundant mimicry of former President Donald Trump’s claims that voter fraud cost him the 2020 election in Arizona.
They are aspersions that are easily proven as false.
It amazes me that the most straightforward explanations for Trump’s loss are overlooked. After recounts, audits and even the Cyber Ninjas, no one has brought forward a credible and provable claim of massive voter fraud in Arizona.
And let’s be clear: There is no evidence that Arizona election officials certified the wrong winner in 2020 or 2022, even with the races being as close as they were. Trump lost by less than 11,000 votes.
I should know. I’m the man the Trump campaign hired to find those fraudulent votes.
I only found a handful of fraudulent votes
The day after the election, I was asked to look for dead and duplicate voters for every mail ballot cast in each of the swing states in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
I found fewer than 200 duplicate mail-in ballot votes fraudulently cast from all of the swing states combined.
The Trump campaign chose not to do anything with these fraudulent votes to avoid calling attention to the small amount of provable fraud my team and I had uncovered, including about a dozen so votes in Arizona.
What are these straightforward explanations as to why Trump lost?
Let’s start with one of the most easily provable reasons: In 2020, voters cast more than 51,000 votes for the Libertarian candidate, Jo Jorgensen. Jorgensen’s vote count was five times the margin of President Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona.
Had Trump convinced 11,000 Libertarians to abandon their party and vote for him, he could have won. Also, the Green Party’s candidate in 2016 won more than 34,000 votes, while in 2020, they took less than 2,000.
Trump simply underperformed in Arizona
Another astonishing and undeniable trend emerged when I compared the 2016 and 2020 election results.
In most of Arizona’s counties, Trump’s share of the vote declined in 2020 relative to 2016. That includes what I define as red counties because Trump won there in 2016 and 2020.
A majority of Arizona’s 10 red counties saw a drop in Trump’s vote share in 2020. Exceptions were Yuma County and the state’s smallest red counties — Gila, Graham and Greenlee — where Trump cleaned up in 2020.
Trump’s underperformance meant that he lost more than 8,500 votes in 2020 in Arizona’s red counties alone — a fact that argues strongly against the voter fraud narrative. It would be counterproductive to do anything that would endanger your own candidate.
A damage control expert’s: Advice for Kari Lake
Those 8,500 votes that Trump lost are easily explained. He told moderate Republicans to take a hike, and those lost votes confirm that these voters did as they were told.
How can a candidate so concerned about a few thousand imaginarily fraudulent votes be so cavalier about losing the support of millions of likely voters across the country?
Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, documented this loss of moderate GOP support in a December 2020 report detailing exit polling results across the swing states commissioned by the Trump campaign. Politico.com obtained this internal campaign document and has it on its website.
Why don’t more conservatives know this truth?
Additionally, researchers have identified more votes than the margin of loss for both Lake and Trump, where voters chose down-ticket Republicans but left the presidential or gubernatorial race blank or voted for the Democrat.
How is it possible that Kimberly Yee, a moderate Republican, won 100,000 more votes in her race for treasurer than Kari Lake did for governor in 2022? Of critical concern to hard-core conservatives, Trump did 5% less well in Maricopa County in 2020 than he did in 2016, while Yee won Maricopa County by 11% in 2022.
Republicans can still win Arizona elections — if they have broad-based appeal.
The passion and certainty of so many Americans that election fraud was behind Trump’s loss has turned into a mania. Some of the most intelligent people I know are convinced, without a shred of objective evidence, that the election was stolen.
Why don’t more people know the truth?
Conservatives mainly get their news from conservative media. Coverage of my story about working for the Trump campaign and the subpoenas I have received garnered mention in just one conservative outlet for an entire year.
Facts are only helpful if people are made aware of them.
Voter fraud did not cause Trump’s 2020 Arizona election loss. I know because I have done the work.
Ken Block owns Simpatico Software Systems and is the author of “Disproven – My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections.” Share your thoughts at feedback@disproven.com; on X, formerly Twitter: @KenBlockRI.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump hired me to find election fraud. Here’s what I found instead
