Fact check: 2020 presidential election results are still valid, Biden is legitimate winner

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·5 min read
21

The claim: The 2020 election was declared 'illegal'

The false claim that fraud swung the 2020 presidential election continues to be a topic of debate in the leadup to the 2022 midterm elections.

"Recent court rulings in two key swing states have deemed last-minute election reforms during the 2020 election 'illegal,'" reads a Facebook post shared Oct. 11 by Upward News, which describes itself as an independent news website.

It references three court rulings: one by Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which ruled absentee ballot drop boxes during 2020’s COVID-19 lockdown measures were illegal, a ruling in Delaware in October that found mail-in-voting was unconstitutional, and a ruling by Pennsylvania's Supreme Court that the post wrongly claims struck down the expansion of unmanned mail-in-ballot drop boxes.

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The same post shared by Upward News on Instagram garnered over 1,000 likes before it was recently deleted.

But the claim is baseless.

There is no constitutional mechanism for declaring an election illegal after Congress has certified the winner, constitutional law experts USA TODAY. Election officials from the three states also said that none of the court rulings referenced in the post impact the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Upward News did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

2020 election results still legitimate

There is no legal mechanism to undo the results of a presidential election after they have been certified by Congress and the president has taken the oath of office, according to Rebecca Green, an election law expert at William and Mary.

"Any challenge to practices and procedures in the 2020 election are now moot, meaning the time to challenge them in court has passed because the election is over," she said.

Daniel Mallinson, an assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, agreed.

"Litigation related to the 2020 election whose relief for petitioners would have affected the final state vote totals are all over," he told USA TODAY in an email.

No court has declared or can declare the 2020 election outcome to be "illegal,” either, according to Green. She noted that a group of prominent Republican lawyers drafted a report detailing all litigation challenging the results of the 2020 election and found no credible legal challenge had been mounted, including before the Supreme Court.

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The court rulings referenced in the post are not evidence that supports this claim, either.

The rulings were challenges to voting practices that plaintiffs asserted violated state law, Green said. The Wisconsin ruling from July 2022 made drop boxes illegal other than in election clerk offices. The Delaware ruling from October 2022 struck down vote by mail.

The Pennsylvania ruling, however, is misrepresented in the post. The state's high court actually upheld a 2019 Pennsylvania mail-in-voting law, reversing a lower court ruling. The case does not address unmanned ballot boxes.

State officials say 2020 election legitimate

Regardless, those voting practices were legal at the time of the 2020 election, and Green said the plaintiffs in those cases sued only to prevent their use going forward.

Election officials from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Delaware told USA TODAY that none of the court rulings affect the 2020 election's outcome.

"The November 2020 election was free, fair, secure and accurate, and no court has ruled that the election was 'illegal,''' said Ellen Lyon, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State. "The results of that election were certified two years ago."

Riley Vetterkind, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told USA TODAY in an email that recent court rulings affecting elections in Wisconsin, do not apply retroactively to the 2020 presidential election.

And the recent Delaware Supreme Court rulings are not at all related to the 2020 presidential election, according to Cathleen Hartsky-Carter, a spokesperson for the State of Delaware Department of Elections.

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The Associated Press also debunked this claim.

USA TODAY has debunked other claims about the 2020 presidential election, including baseless assertions that the election was "rigged" and that Biden did not legally win the election.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the 2020 election was declared ''illegal.'' There is no constitutional mechanism for declaring a presidential election illegal after Congress has certified electoral votes and the president has taken an oath of office. And the court rulings cited in the post do not apply to the 2020 presidential election, according to election officials from Wisconsin, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: 2020 presidential election results are still legitimate

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