Trump's
Lies Matter
This is what Trump
said to the crowd before the attack on the Capitol.
"There
were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Now think of this. You
had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters. That means you had 200 … Where
did they come from? You know where they came from? Somebody’s imagination.
Whatever they needed. So in Pennsylvania you had 205,000 more votes than you
had voters!"
There were
6,917,613 ballots cast in Pennsylvania out of 9,089,901 registered (meaning you
had to sign and have a photo ID) voters. That's a 76% turnout, meaning that for
every three people who voted, there was a fourth who didn't.
Here's what Trump then said about Detroit.
"That’s
Detroit. 174,000 ballots were counted without being tied to an actual
registered voter. Nobody knows where they came from. Also in Wayne County, poll
watches observed canvassers rescanning batches of ballots over and over again,
up to three or four or five times. In Detroit, turnout was 139 percent of
registered voters. Think of that. So you had 139 percent of the people in
Detroit voting. This is in Michigan, Detroit, Michigan."
Wayne
County had 828,102 ballots cast out of 1,398,888 registered voters. That's a
59.1% turnout. In 2016, when Trump won Michigan, Wayne County had 788,459
ballots cast out of 1,355,794 for a turnout of 58.2%. There were 40,049 more
registered voters in 2020, and 39,643 more ballots cast.
Please note, Trump won 228,993 votes (34.2%) in
Wayne County in 2016, and 264,553 (27.8%) in 2020. That's an increase of 35,560
votes for Trump in Wayne County (that's a 15.2% increase for Trump in an
election he's claiming was rigged), although his percentage of the vote went
down because Biden's vote increased more.
And just to be clear, Biden won Michigan by
154,188. His margin in Wayne County was 42,166 bigger than Hillary's, not enough
to explain Biden's statewide victory. Just for the sake of clarity and
comparison, turnout in Michigan rose by 664,683 statewide. Registration was up
7.3%, and turnout was up 13.6%, compared to Wayne County's registration
increase of 3.1% and a turnout increase of 5.2%. So, Trump's 15.2% vote
increase (compared to a statewide rise of 13.6%) shows he did relatively better
in Wayne County than in the rest of the state. Trump lost Michigan in the white
suburbs, not because of non-existent fraud in Detroit.
Trump's explanation of election fraud is nothing
but a racist dogwhistle.
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