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I don’t believe it.
Most people aren’t Raskolnikov. They don’t make decisions like this. At most, they use such a ghoulish, utilitarian calculus as a post facto justification.
No, if there was cheating, it was banal. The first thought was “hey, I can get something I want.” The second, if it happened at all, would have been “no one will notice.” That’s sufficient to explain the kind of crimes that @Walterodim suggested. Fudging counts, encouraging false statements. Voting for your dead parent.
But the “existential danger” theory proves much, much more. If you’re convinced Trump is Turbo Hitler, why are you stopping at a fake ballot? Where’s your manifesto and your one-dollar stamps? How did you suddenly become amazing at judging risk, such that no one gets caught in the act?
The Venn diagram between Trump haters, principled utilitarians, and election officials has to be vanishingly small. Perhaps that’s why he’s had such an hard time finding evidence of fraud.
I see it as more a prospiracy, and it's mostly small actions on the margin by many individuals. There are almost certainly some more bold cheaters, but I just think they must have gotten away with it. It's not like it's easy to prove, and it has recently gotten even harder. The people who are most able to investigate are uninterested in doing so, because they don't want to discover cheating for various reasons. Easier to leave the "investigation" to a bunch of wingnuts who can easily be discredited and ignored. So long as the Democrats aren't cheating too much, and they are doing it to hurt Trump, I think most of our institutions are quite happy to turn a blind eye (including a lot of Republicans). This kind of cheating is itself less dangerous than people beleiving it is happening, so it's tolerated so long as it is simultaneously denied. There are limits to this, but I think activists have gotten quite savvy about how to game these election systems.
Assassination attempts are kind of a proxy here. For every one person who is willing to try and assassinate Trump, how many are willing to cheat if a good opportunity presents itself? Probably a lot, and a lot of those people will get themselves involved in the electoral process.
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