Core argument in Trump's election fraud theory debunked by university research: report

One of Donald Trump's core arguments in support of his election fraud claims has been debunked by new research at a prominent university, according to a report.

Trump flung all sorts of claims about alleged fraud after his loss, but a new study disproves a central one that links Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) – which gives money to help administer elections in Democratic-leaning areas – to the wide-ranging conspiracy he claims had cost him the election, reported the Washington Post.

"This one gained traction largely because it overlapped with the complaints about social media companies, complaints that themselves were built on top of years of poorly grounded rhetoric about perceived bias from places such as Facebook," wrote columnist Philip Bump.

"So then Facebook/Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg gives a bunch of money to an organization [that] starts giving money to aid elections administration, generally in Democratic-voting areas, and voilà. A new narrative emerges: The election was tainted by 'Zuckerbucks!'"

Trump suggested that CTCL money lifted turnout in Democratic areas so much it cost him a victory, but data scientist Apoorva Lal and University of California Los Angeles assistant professor Daniel Thompson compared counties that got those grants with those that didn't, and determined the increase in grant-receiving areas was minuscule.

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“The effect of the grants on turnout was less than half of the effect of an extra day of early voting, roughly half of the effect of a mailer encouraging citizens to vote by mail, less than one-tenth of the effect of universal vote by mail, and less than one-twentieth of the effect of mobile voting,” the researchers wrote.

Trump's claims also mixed up cause with effect, because counties that requested CTCL grants had been harder hit by the pandemic early on and needed help ensuring voters had access to the polls, and did not see voting totals jump because the organization targeted them to boost turnout.

“Many counties did not receive grants," the researchers wrote. "The effect of the grants on statewide totals is substantially smaller than the effect in the average county.”

“Despite the razor-thin margins in 2020, we find that the turnout and Democratic vote share effects are not large enough to have swung the election," they concluded.