Ballot harvesting. Stuffing ballot boxes. Tampering with voting equipment. Stealing ballots. Censoring candidates. These were some of the concerns raised, notably by former President Donald Trump, in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
As we approach 2024, how great a concern is election security for the 2024 presidential candidates? The Epoch Times submitted questions to major candidates in both parties to find out.
The questions centered on three concerns: Did election tampering affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? What should be done to ensure a fair election in 2024? Will you accept the outcome of the 2024 contest?
Former Ambassador Nikki Haley responded directly to our questions. Representatives of former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis referred us to their previously published views on the matter.
No response was received from Democrat candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Republican candidates Trump, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), or Vivek Ramaswamy.
The views of Trump, Scott, Ramaswamy, and Biden were available through media interviews and public statements.
Fraud in 2020
Trump made broad claims of election interference immediately after the 2020 election and stands by them.“That was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country. All over the world, they looked at it, and they saw exactly what everyone else saw,” Trump said in a May 11 town hall-style meeting on CNN.
Trump claimed that election interference caused a difference of 16 percentage points in the outcome of the election.
The former president cited censorship on Twitter and “millions of votes” caught on camera in cases of “stuffing ballot boxes.” He referred to alleged evidence from government cameras as proof.
DeSantis acknowledged some election tampering in a May 26 interview on MSN but said much of the fault lies with Trump.
The Florida governor said that the COVID-19 state of emergency contributed to the use of ballot collection, also called ballot harvesting, which is the collection of absentee ballots from voters by a third party for delivery to a ballot drop box.
While legal in many states, critics claim that it creates an opportunity for fraud.
“Of course, I think that that’s wrong,” DeSantis said. “But if I were the candidate, I would have gone in and combated that, either had our people doing the same ballot harvesting or been more aggressive to try to head that off in terms of some of the legal challenges.”
DeSantis also said the government colluded with tech companies to censor negative information about Biden, which he called “election interference.”
“It’s totally unfair, but I’ll also point out that was Donald Trump’s FBI and Donald Trump’s DHS that was doing that. He didn’t have control over his own agencies,” DeSantis said. “If someone in my government were doing that, they would have been fired the next day.”
Pence called the 2020 contest “an election marked by significant voting irregularities and numerous instances of officials setting aside state election law” in a March 2021 article for The Heritage Foundation.
“I share the concerns of millions of Americans about the integrity of the 2020 election,” Pence wrote.
Yet Pence famously refused to decertify the election results in the Senate.
“But once states had certified those elections, once the courts had reviewed them, once the Congress had considered any objections, I knew my duty was clear,” he said in a June 7 town hall-style event on CNN.
Haley, Scott, and Ramaswamy have said they believe some election tampering did occur but that it didn’t change the outcome of the race.
“There was fraud in the 2020 election, but no court or state legislature found that it was enough to change the outcome,” Haley told The Epoch Times.
Scott said there was evidence of minor irregularities and even fraud, but he saw no evidence of a rigged election. “Thus far, no justice, judge or fact finder has found evidence indicating the election results in those states should be overturned,” Scott said in a statement issued on Jan. 5, 2021.
Ramaswamy said much the same in a May 19 interview on NPR.
“I have a lot of issues with the suppression of information by social media companies and internet companies that led up to that election,” Ramaswamy said.
Corrective Actions
Biden has obviously accepted the results of the 2020 election. However, he has voiced concerns about possible election interference in 2024. His concern centers on the enactment of laws aimed at voter suppression.“The Georgia Republican Party, the state Legislature has now given itself the power to make it easier for partisan actors—their cronies—to remove local election officials,” Biden said at Atlanta University in January 2022.
Biden said that laws preventing voting by mail or ballot drop boxes could keep many from having their votes counted.
Some 80 bills were introduced in 23 states this year that would place new limits on voting by mail and obtaining absentee ballots, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Trump’s ideas for securing the vote are directly contrary to Biden’s.
“We should have voter I.D. We should have one-day elections. We should have paper ballots instead of these mail-in votes,” Trump said.
His proposal would eliminate early voting and electronic voting machines. Trump didn’t specify whether one-day voting would allow for absentee ballots, which are frequently delivered by mail.
Florida has banned the practice of ballot harvesting, DeSantis said, along with private donations to election departments to facilitate ballot counting.
“That’s what you should do,” DeSantis said.
The practice of donating to election departments gained notoriety after a nonprofit created by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated some $350 million to 2,500 election offices in 47 states.
However, DeSantis favors voting by mail.
“I think telling people not to send in a mail ballot is a huge mistake,” DeSantis said, who won reelection as governor in 2022 by 19 percentage points with the help of voters who don’t typically vote in midterm elections.
“Most of them chose to vote by absentee ballot through the mail. That was their choice. If we told them you can only vote on Election Day, some of them very well may not have voted.
Pence has spoken about the need for election reform but avoided prescribing broad solutions, leaving specific reforms to state legislatures.
“Election reform is a national imperative, but under our Constitution, election reform must be undertaken at the state level,” he wrote in an article for The Heritage Foundation.
Pence decried a federal law proposed in 2021 that would force states to adopt mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, online voter registration, and other measures he sees as undermining election security.
Haley said she believes that some election regulations should be adopted on a national level.
“Ensuring election integrity remains critically important for our democracy,” she told The Epoch Times. “As governor, I enacted mandatory voter I.D. in South Carolina to protect the sanctity of our elections. We must do that nationwide.”
Scott introduced legislation in January 2021 that would have created a bipartisan committee to examine the 2020 election cycle and make suggestions to state legislatures.
Ramaswamy has proposed a novel idea aimed at affecting civic engagement if not election integrity: increasing the voting age to 25 with exceptions for those in full-time public service in the military or as first responders, or those who have passed the same civics test required of naturalized citizens.
Accepting 2024 Results
Only one candidate responded to The Epoch Times on this question: Will you commit to accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election?Haley told The Epoch Times that she would. Two others have touched on the question in public statements.
“Yes, if I think it’s an honest election, absolutely, I would,” Trump said.
“And I hope that it’s going to be very straight-up, because, if it’s going to be straight-up, we’re going to win the election,” he added.
Pence touched on the matter indirectly when asked whether he would support Trump if he became the 2024 Republican nominee.
“Anyone who puts themselves above the Constitution should never be president in the first place. And anyone who asks anyone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president again,” Pence said on CNN.
On to 2024
Trump remains the only candidate claiming that election fraud significantly affected—in fact, determined the outcome of—the most recent presidential election.Yet most Republican candidates remain concerned that some voting practices allowed by states will be exploited either to allow individuals to vote unlawfully or to co-opt the ballots of absentee or mail-in voters.
Among Republicans, DeSantis alone mentioned the value of mail-in voting.
Biden, like many Democrats, is more concerned that state legislatures will use legal means to inhibit or discourage citizens who are eligible to vote from casting a ballot.
Though polls continue to show that a sizable minority of voters believe that the 2020 election was unfair, few cases of voter fraud have been proven.
Five states that voted for Trump in 2016 went to Biden in 2020: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
In those states, 16 people have been convicted of committing voter fraud in the 2020 election, according to data from The Heritage Foundation. Those cases accounted for a total of 44 fraudulent ballots.
