After an intense hunt by President Trump’s allies to surface voting irregularities in this year’s election, law enforcement agencies in six key swing states targeted by the president have found just a modest number of complaints that have merited investigation, according to cases tracked by state officials.
So far, only a handful of cases have resulted in actual criminal charges alleging wrongdoing — some of them against Republican voters aiming to help Trump, according to officials, including a man charged Monday with trying to cast a ballot in Pennsylvania for the president in the name of his deceased mother.
The tiny number of incidents further undercut Trump’s barrage of false allegations that there was widespread manipulation of the vote — claims that continue to be echoed by many Republican officials, including some who acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, but assert that fraud was prevalent.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Monday wrote in a tweet that there was “mounting evidence of voter fraud” and members of Congress were preparing to “fight back” against it.
In fact, such allegations have been rejected by dozens of judges across the country, a number of whom noted in their decisions that Trump and his allies failed to put forward evidence to support such claims.
The minimal number of criminal investigations that have so far come out of the November vote further reinforce the absence of sweeping vote fraud schemes.