Weeks after the Maricopa County election audit revealed more than 50,000 ballots affected by irregularities (more than five times Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state-certified results) a new poll shows the number of voters who believe that cheating affected the results of the 2020 election.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey found that 56 percent of respondents agree that “It’s likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including 41% who say it’s ‘very likely.’” This is an increase of five points since April. Just 39 percent don’t think the election was affected by cheating.
Broken down by party, 32 percent of Democrats believe “it is at least somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” as do 54 percent of unaffiliated voters and 84 percent of Republican voters. While it’s not surprising that Democrats are the least likely group to believe cheating may have affected the outcome of the election, that nearly one out of three Democrats believe it is stunning.
There’s more bad news for Democrats in the poll, which found that a stunning 95 percent of voters say it’s important to prevent cheating in elections. Voters (except for Democrats) are also highly suspicious of voting by mail. While 67 percent of Democrats think making voting by mail permanent is a good policy, 73 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of unaffiliated voters think it’s a bad policy.
Seventy-one percent of Republicans suspect that more mail-in voting will cause cheating, as do a majority (55 percent) of unaffiliated voters. Only 30 percent of Democrats believe that voting by mail will cause more cheating in elections.
The largest number of suspect ballots from the Maricopa County audit involved mail-in ballots. More than 23,000 ballots were found to have been mailed from prior addresses. This is a troubling number because ballots, by law, cannot be forwarded, and these votes alone account for more than double Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona.
RELATED: Ignore the MSM: Here’s What the 2020 Maricopa County Election Audit Actually Says
Naturally, Biden supporters are the most enthusiastic about making voting by mail permanent. Among voters who approve of Biden’s job performance as president—and apparently, there are still some who do—a whopping 88 percent support making voting by mail permanent. Of those who disapprove of his job performance, 84 percent agree that making voting by mail permanent is bad policy.
While there are partisan divisions on voting by mail, there’s at least some good news in that 95 percent of all voters agree that it’s important to prevent cheating in elections. The Maricopa County audit report even suggested various legislative fixes to help make future elections more secure and less susceptible to fraud, including legislation linking voter-roll registration to changes in driver’s licenses or other state identification, as well as voter rolls being validated by the United States Postal Service (USPS) National Change of Address (NCOA) service at a set date prior to every election, as well as mandating a clear schedule for maintaining voter rolls.
This is something we can accomplish. A recent poll found that despite the Democrats’ rhetoric, more Americans think rules around voting aren’t strict enough (44 percent) than those who say they make voting too difficult (33 percent). Regardless of party affiliation or what you believe about the 2020 election, when a majority of voters don’t have faith that an election was on the level, that’s a problem that cannot be ignored.
