\n\n“the \u201celectoral commission\u201d plan backed by Cruz and 10 of his colleagues is nonsense. For one, the commission they demand has no precedent in the modern era and no realistic prospects of being convened. What\u2019s more, the statement is predicated on a series of spurious claims by Cruz and his colleagues that echo similar \u2014 and equally baseless \u2014 election fraud rhetoric to that heard repeatedly from Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Election Day \u2014 November 3, 2020 \u2014 is now 60 days in the past. In that time, Trump and his Republican allies have filed and lost at least 60 election-related lawsuits<\/a> at all levels of the state and federal court systems alleging voter fraud and other improprieties \u2014 and they have failed to prove their case at every turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recounts in battleground states like Georgia<\/a> and Wisconsin<\/a> \u2014 both won by Biden \u2014 have turned up no evidence of large-scale fraud or irregularities that could have affected the results of the election. And in all 50 states and Washington, DC, the election results have been carefully reviewed by state officials and certified<\/a> as accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, 60 days of intense scrutiny have turned up exactly zero reasons to believe the letter\u2019s false claim that \u201cthe allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election\u201d are worrying \u2014 and there\u2019s no reason to believe that an \u201celectoral commission\u201d would turn up a different result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That there have been allegations of fraud as never before is true, but as MSNBC\u2019s Chris Hayes<\/a> pointed out on Sunday, these have been misleading efforts led by Trump, and bolstered by his allies, like Cruz, to overturn the election\u2019s rightful results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cruz and his allies cite the results of this effort in their statement Saturday that widespread belief in the existence of voter fraud \u2014 a sort of warped \u201cwhere there\u2019s smoke, there\u2019s fire\u201d argument \u2014 necessitates the creation of an election commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReuters\/Ipsos polling<\/a>, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe \u2018the election was rigged\u2019,\u201d the group said Saturday. \u201cThat belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s an accurate reporting of the poll\u2019s results \u2014 but it does conveniently leave out the likely reason for that widespread belief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality, the Republican base has been inundated with evidence-free voter fraud rhetoric from every corner of the right-wing universe \u2014 from Trump\u2019s Twitter feed to Fox News to stump speeches by Republican senators \u2014 almost nonstop since Trump\u2019s election defeat. There\u2019s a direct line between Cruz\u2019s rhetoric and the problem he diagnoses: As Hayes put it on Twitter<\/a>, \u201cThey\u2019ve spent months lying to people, telling them the election was stolen and now turn around and cite the fact that many people believe them as evidence!\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n