Trump and his surrogates have been out there desperately working the refs on television and filing one frivolous lawsuit after another in the hope of getting the courts to toss this election to Trump.
In an example of the former, here's GOP Rep. turned Fox contributor Sean Duffy on America's Newsroom this Thursday, helping to push the conspiracy theory that there's something fishy going on in Wisconsin because voter turnout shot way up.
DUFFY: Absolutely, Trace. I think the Trump campaign is smart to do this and also in Wisconsin usually we have about 68 to 70% voter turnout in races like this. It appears that there was an 89% voter turnout in Tuesday's election, which is ncredibly high and begs some questions as to what happened there.
Now, there could be reasoning for what happened in Wisconsin. We could have had, we have same day registration in our state, so we could have had 500 or 600,000 people register on Tuesday to vote. That could explain it away.
But the Trump campaign is smart to go through a ballot count with our electors. We also have an opportunity, Trace, to actually subpoena witnesses, subpoena documents, so we can look and see what happened in places like Milwaukee and Dane county. We have some precincts Trace where there were more ballots cast than people registered to vote. That's always a telltale sign that something is fishy in the electorate.
GALLAGHER: And Congressman, just to clear things up, this 89% number, I want to give both sides to this just so we have balance and clarity. Some journalists, Eric Trump is citing this 89% vote turnout number in Wisconsin. The state is saying well, what's happening is, they're doing different math.
They're dividing the number of people who voted by registered voters. Instead what the state does is divide number of people who voted by total voting age people. That's where the discrepancy comes in. Again, we have not confirmed those numbers are what they are, but that's what the state is saying about this.
Gallagher claims that Fox hasn't "confirmed those numbers," but a local news station debunked this nonsense being pushed by the Trumps and Duffy the day before Duffy repeated the lie on his network: VERIFY: No, Wisconsin's 2020 turnout is not the highest by a huge margin:
There is a claim that Wisconsin voter participation skyrocketed this year. But those making the claim aren't using the formula the state uses.
As the vote counts in Wisconsin became increasingly close Wednesday, multiple false claims started to surface about the results in the state. One claim alleged that Wisconsin had counted more votes than they had registered people. That claim is false.
Another, similar claim, focused on the voter turnout percentage in Wisconsin.
Both Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. shared it Tuesday.It shows the Wisconsin voter turnout in the last five elections compared to 2020. The past elections showed voter turnout ranging from 67%-73%. Voter turnout in 2020, by comparison, was 89%. [...]
While the number may change slightly with final results, the real voter turnout is closer to 71%, not 89%. [...]
But the 2020 number in the claim is actually achieved using a different formula than the one Wisconsin uses.
To get 89%, the claim takes the current votes cast in Wisconsin this year and divides them by the registered voters in Wisconsin.
So that’s 3,240,268 votes cast among 3,684,726 registered voters, which equals roughly 89%.
But that’s the wrong equation to use, at least in Wisconsin.
It clearly states on its site that “Wisconsin does not calculate turnout based on the number of registered voters.” Instead it uses the “total voting-age population.” That’s anyone in the state above the age of 18. For 2020, Wisconsin says that number is 4,536,293.
Gallagher knew full well Duffy was lying, but he had to hedge things so as not to upset Dear Leader or his cult that believes all of the right wing propaganda they hear on Fox. This is as close as you'll come to someone lying actually getting fact-checked in real time on Trump TV.
