False: Donald Trump and Jim Marchant lost the 2020 election because it was rigged.

By: Gayathri Loka
October 18 2022

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Context: 

On October 8, 2022, former U.S. President Donald Trump was at a rally and gave a speech at the Minden-Tahoe Airport, Nevada. Trump was joined by the Republican party candidate for Nevada Secretary of State, Jim Marchant. During the speech, Marchant said, "President Trump and I lost an election in 2020 because of a rigged election." The claim was not refuted by Trump, and the event marked another attempt by him and his supporters to paint the 2020 Presidential elections and many polls after that as manipulated and rife with voter fraud.

In fact:

Marchant stated that the ongoing congressional race was rigged against him. In June 2022, Merchant was elected as the Primary Candidate for Nevada Secretary of State and is the Republican candidate for the November 8 elections. In 2016 Marchant had won the Nevada State elections after defeating Democrat Sean D. Lyttle. Merchant got 16,085 out of 30,646 votes. In 2020, Marchant lost the General Election for the U.S. House Nevada District 4. He obtained 152,284 out of 332,469 votes. Steven Horsford, the Democratic representative, won with 168,457 votes. 

In a lawsuit in November 2020 Marchant alleged the ballot count was rigged in Clark County. The judge ruled that the district court lacked jurisdiction and noted that Marchant lost by 33,000 votes in Clark County, "which the Court finds to be an insurmountable deficit to overcome on the facts before it," Politico reported in its debunking of Mr. Merchant's claims of rigged elections. The report also said that Republican officials had said that the elections in Nevada were secure.

Claims about the 2020 Presidential Elections being rigged have been debunked by Logically and other media organizations as there was no evidence of voter fraud during the 2020 election. President Joe Biden's victory was certified by the Electoral College. On December 12, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the presidential elections in several key battleground states. Several similar lawsuits were filed by Trump and his supporters across the country, but all the claims were dismissed, Logically reported. 

Former U.S Attorney General William Barr who served under Trump had also told the former president that had also said that Trump’s claim that the election was ‘stolen’ was untrue. Even Politico had stated that manipulating the elections “would require thousands of people conspiring across multiple jurisdictions to commit felonies”, that too, under the watch of independent observers.

The U.S. will hold its mid-term elections on November 8, 2022. Claims and allegations regarding rigged elections are being made to woo the voters during the mid-terms, despite the fact that there is no evidence to these baseless claims.  

The verdict: 

There is no evidence to show that the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections were rigged. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed lawsuits alleging election fraud, and Democrats and several Republicans rejected similar baseless remarks. Hence, we are marking this claim false.