Top GOP election lawyer slams Trump's vote fraud claims, says the GOP searched fruitlessly for decades


"Legions of Republican lawyers have searched in vain over four decades for fraudulent double voting," Benjamin Ginsberg, a newly retired top Republican Party election lawyer, writes in a Washington Post op-ed published late Tuesday. "At long last, they have a blatant example of a major politician urging his supporters to illegally vote twice. The only hitch is that the candidate is President Trump."
Trump's repeated exhortations to commit vote fraud, paired with his frequent claims that the election will be "rigged" and "fraudulent," are "doubly wrong," Ginsberg writes. They make the GOP's "torrent of 2020 voting litigation" look like "transactional hypocrisy," and they are false. "The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there's no proof of widespread fraud," he concedes. "At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged."
"These are painful conclusions for me to reach," Ginsberg adds, setting out an overview of his "38 years in the GOP's legal trenches," including serving as counsel to the Republican National Committee and six of the last four GOP presidential nominees.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Each Election Day since 1984, I've been in precincts looking for voting violations, or in Washington helping run the nationwide GOP Election Day operations, overseeing the thousands of Republican lawyers and operatives each election on alert for voting fraud. In every election, Republicans have been in polling places and vote tabulation centers. Republican lawyers in every state have been able to examine mail-in/absentee ballot programs. [Benjamin Ginsberg, The Washington Post]
The GOP lawyers and conservative activists found only a "minuscule" amount of fraud, mail-in or otherwise, and despite looking, Trump's 2016 campaign "could produce no hard evidence of systemic fraud," Ginsberg writes. Trump even put "the most vociferous hunters of Democratic election fraud" in charge of presidential commission on "election integrity," he notes, and "it disbanded without finding anything." Read Ginsberg's entire op-ed, including his warning for the GOP, at The Washington Post.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
Will online age checks doom internet freedom?
Today's Big Question Or do they protect children from harm?
-
At least 800 dead in Afghanistan earthquake
speed read A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan
-
Trump crypto token launch earns family billions
Speed Read The World Liberty Financial token is now the Trump family's 'most valuable asset'
-
Trump crypto token launch earns family billions
Speed Read The World Liberty Financial token is now the Trump family's 'most valuable asset'
-
RFK Jr. names new CDC head as staff revolt
Speed Read Kennedy installed his deputy, Jim O'Neill, as acting CDC director
-
DC prosecutors lose bid to indict sandwich thrower
Speed Read Prosecutors sought to charge Sean Dunn with assaulting a federal officer
-
White House fires new CDC head amid agency exodus
Speed Read CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted after butting heads with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccines
-
DOGE put Social Security data at risk, official says
Speed Read DOGE workers made the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans vulnerable to identity theft
-
Court rejects Trump suit against Maryland US judges
Speed Read Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee, said the executive branch had no authority to sue the judges
-
Trump expands National Guard role in policing
Speed Read The president wants the Guard to take on a larger role in domestic law enforcement
-
Trump says he's firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Speed Read The move is likely part of Trump's push to get the central bank to cut interest rates