Fact check: 2020 presidential election results are still legitimate, despite Trump's claim

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·6 min read
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The claim: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the 2020 election was rigged

Ahead of the midterms, former President Donald Trump continued to promote the falsehood that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

"So the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just ruled, in effect, that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged, but they'll let that result stand, however, in future Elections, you are no longer allowed to do what was done in the 2020 election," reads part of a Nov. 3 Truth Social post from Trump, which generated over 18,000 likes.

Trump also claimed that "this decision represents far more votes than would have been needed to win Pennsylvania."

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The post was shared widely on Instagram and Facebook, according to the social media insights tool CrowdTangle.

But the claim is baseless.

No such ruling was made in the state, according to a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State. While Pennsylvania's highest court did rule that undated or misdated ballots should not be counted in the midterms, this ruling does not apply to the 2020 race retroactively, experts say. Lawsuits Trump filed challenging ballot dates in Pennsylvania after the 2020 election all failed.

An array of recounts and audits conducted in key battleground states confirmed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment. Liz Harrington, Trump's spokesperson, did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

2020 election results are still valid

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania did not rule that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged," Ellen Lyon, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, told USA TODAY in an email.

Numerous recounts, reviews and forensic audits, including ones conducted in Pennsylvania, have affirmed that the 2020 presidential election results are legitimate, as USA TODAY previously reported. Biden won 81 million popular votes compared to Trump's 74 million, as well as 306 electoral votes compared to Trump's 232.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other election officials said in a statement that the 2020 election was the "most secure in American history," and there is "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised."

While the Trump campaign and its allies filed dozens of state and federal lawsuits following the election, all of those suits were either dismissed or failed, including those appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fact check: How we know the 2020 election results were legitimate, not 'rigged' as Donald Trump claims

Pennsylvania ballot ruling applies going forward

Pennsylvania's highest court ruled on Nov. 1 that election officials must set aside undated or incorrectly dated absentee or mail-in ballots and not count them in the midterm elections.

But the current ruling has no bearing on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, Dan Mallinson, an assistant professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, told USA TODAY in an email.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had previously ruled in 2020 that undated or misdated ballots should be counted in Pennsylvania in the 2020 race, according to Marc Meredith, an associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. The court made that ruling in part because there were not uniform practices or an understanding of what the law was relating to that issue prior to that, he said.

After the 2020 election, Trump's campaign challenged the validity of ballots in Pennsylvania counties, including 8,329 ballots in Philadelphia County, some of which were undated, and 2,349 undated ballots in Allegheny County. But these lawsuits failed.

There’s no evidence that indicates there was anything wrong with those ballots that made it less clear who the voters cast their ballots for, Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania, told USA TODAY.

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

Trump's claim that the court's decision to not count undated or misdated ballots "would have represented far more votes than needed to win Pennsylvania" is also questionable, experts say.

Lyon said the Pennsylvania Department of State does not have data on how many ballots were misdated or undated during the 2020 race. And in any case, it is unclear what the Trump-Biden divide among them would have been, Roosevelt said.

The Associated Press and PolitiFact also debunked the claim.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the 2020 election was rigged. No such ruling was made in the state. Numerous audits and recounts affirm that the 2020 presidential election outcome is legitimate. Pennsylvania's highest court did rule that undated or misdated ballots should not be counted in the midterms, but this ruling does not apply to the 2020 race retroactively, experts say.

Our fact-check sources:

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: 2020 election was valid, contrary to Trump's latest claim

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