Some Democrats say Trump’s victory was due to fraud

“The account is not good”. “Trump cheated”. “Demand a recount”. Since November 6, and with the victory of the Republican candidate in the US presidential elections, voices have been raised to question the results. Unlike previous elections, this time they come from the Democratic camp.

In the speech in which she admitted her defeat, Kamala Harris nevertheless admitted that even if “The election results were not what we wanted”, “must [les] accept “. But many of his voters, surprised both by their candidate’s defeat and by its magnitude, expressed their incomprehension and anguish. Among them, some denounce rigged elections and ask for a recount of votes.

Marginal on TikTok, this Democratic electoral denialism is expressed above all on social networks [les voix de l’élection de ] 2024″). It’s nothing as massive and systematic as the “Stop the Steal” movement by Trump and his activists in 2020, or “Protect the Vote” during the 2024 campaign. However, some posts reached notable audiences, such as a tweet asking for a count viewed more than 13 million times.

The myth of the 20 million missing votes

This conspiratorial speech is based on insignificant or misleading details. “There’s no way those motherfuckers would have counted [les votes] so fast, because they had never counted so fast”This angers an Internet user from X, in reference to the time it took to find out the winner in the previous elections. But these were stricter. How he explains it New York Times On November 6, Trump’s lead in several key states was enough to declare him the winner even before the count was over, and Kamala Harris could no longer mathematically join him.

On Facebook, another Internet user explains that“20 million votes are missing”proof that “something is clearly wrong”. According to a persistent rumor, Kamala Harris would have received 20 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020 (in other versions, the difference is 18 million), a difference considered abnormal and suspicious. The Democratic Party and its main political action committee, Priorities USA, periodically denounce operations of “elimination of votes”a set of legal and illegal techniques intended to prevent certain groups from exercising their civil rights. In Virginia, for example, 1,600 people were removed from the electoral roll in early November by decision of the Supreme Court, in a context of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over their American citizenship.

Only it is very unlikely that 20 million voters were deprived of their vote. In reality, these shaky calculations do not specify that Joe Biden had collected a total of 81 million votes in 2020, which constitutes an absolute record in American history, but that the counting of Kamala Harris’ votes is still ongoing . On Thursday, November 7 at 2 p.m., the Democratic candidate obtained almost 68 million votes, only 13 million less, while counting continues in Nevada and Arizona. It has already surpassed Hillary Clinton’s 65 million votes in 2016.

Real and fantasy interference

The most serious accusations concern Russian interference in the elections. At least three times in the past two weeks, US intelligence services have reported viral videos promoting pro-Trump conspiracy theories. These deepfakes have been attributed to Storm-1516, a Kremlin-linked disinformation group that previously operated in France during the Olympics.

The internet user behind the AlphaFox78 account, a Trump activist who was the first to spread a video of fake Haitian voters, explained to CNN that a pro-Kremlin propagandist paid him $100 to post it. If these manipulations are tested, they only had one effect. “marginal” On the ballots, estimates political science researcher Julien Giry, these circulate mainly among Republican voters who have already been won over by Trump.

However, some Democrats denounce massive election interference, even if that means highlighting news stories, a common technique among Trump conspiracy activists. a user of “an investigation and a new vote”by sharing four video excerpts that evoke burning ballot boxes, as many other signs of electoral manipulation. However, although three ballot boxes were indeed burned in the states of Oregon and Washington, these incidents remained isolated. The police do not know the motives of the person responsible, who left messages of support for Palestine, but the majority of the affected voters were able to be identified and vote again.

“There is no evidence of any malicious activity”

Generally speaking, the scattered Democratic protests are more a cause of consternation than real doubts about the American electoral system. He was not found guilty, federal authorities say. “Our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the community [qui tient les bureaux de vote] never so well organized”salutes CISA, the United States cyber defense agency, which declares that it has not seen “There is no evidence of any malicious activity that has materially impacted the security or integrity of our election infrastructure. »

In 2020, Donald Trump tried to convince the Georgia Secretary of State of him “find 11,780 votes” what he needed to win the elections. He has since been charged with “fraudulent conspiracy against the United States.” Four years later, after a campaign marked by the total dissemination of false information and conspiracy theories about hypothetical Democratic fraud, he won the elections with a comfortable lead. Accusations of manipulation by Democrats are now mocked by Trumpist activists.