Following the 2020 presidential election, many Democrats and members of the media have chastised Republicans for questioning the veracity and integrity surrounding Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Inquiring about the accuracy of the 2020 vote has been treated as conspiratorial and a threat to American democracy.
This view stands in stark contrast to how several prominent Democrat politicians have spoken about their party losing the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.
In 2001, several Democratic members of the House of Representatives objected to George W. Bush’s victory in the 2000 election.
“An election has been stolen, robbed,” said Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.).
“The Supreme Court denied the actual and accurate counting of the votes of Florida,” according to Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas).
“There is overwhelming evidence that George W. Bush did not win this election,” stated Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) who also remarked that, “It is our duty to challenge this vote.”
While on the floor of Congress, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) declared, “The objection is in writing and I don’t care that it is not signed by a member of the Senate.”
Suggestions that the 2000 election was stolen have persisted over the years, as evidenced by 2004 presidential election loser John Kerry’s appearance on ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ in 2018 where he stated, “Al Gore was elected President of The United States. It just wasn’t counted.”
Kerry’s loss in the 2004 presidential election was also objected to in the House of Representatives. However unlike in 2001, a sitting Senator, Barbara Boxer of California, signed on to the objection delaying the vote certification process for several hours. This led to noteworthy remarks from then-Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Clinton asserted, “As we look at our election system, I think it’s fair to say that there are many legitimate questions about its accuracy, about its integrity.” She went on to claim, “I would be standing here saying this no matter what the outcome of the election.”
Obama took issue with the physical election machines saying, “Too many voters have cast votes on machines that jam or malfunction, or suck the votes without a trace.”
Similar to Obama, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has made claims about faulty voting machines stating that he had to replace them all during his term. McAuliffe recounted to Bill Maher a personal anecdote in which he claimed a voting machine changing his vote while voting in the 2014 Virginia Senate race. “I kept voting for the Democrat, a Republican name kept coming up. Three times that happened.”
McAuliffe then said, “I brought in some technology experts. They were able to hack into our machines from offsite in about five or six minutes, and within four minutes they were able to change a vote.”
In many ways, McAullife has been the ringleader of Democrat assertions about stolen elections which has proven ironic given his repeated attacks against Glenn Youngkin, his opponent in the upcoming 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race, for suggesting that “election integrity” is an important issue.
McAuliffe has made definitive public statements about the 2000 election such as, “You know it, I know it, they know it, we won that election,” and “We actually won the last presidential election folks, they STOLE the last presidential election.”