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TIME's "Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election"

On Feb. 4, 2021, TIME published Molly Ball's account of an informal coalition of progressive groups, labor and business leaders that worked behind the scenes to shape how the 2020 election was run and how its results were protected. The article itself uses words like "cabal" and "conspiracy," which later fueled claims that it admitted the election was rigged.

Feb 4, 2021 ·

What the record shows

Ball describes "a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies," with AFL-CIO adviser Mike Podhorzer as a central organizer. According to the article, the network helped get millions of people to vote by mail for the first time, recruited poll workers, pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation, fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, and prepared to counter efforts to overturn the result. It also describes an Election Day joint statement from the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO urging patience with the count. Ball frames all of this as protecting the election, writing that the participants "were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."

What the record doesn’t support

Courts and audits found no fraud that could have changed the 2020 result. More than 60 lawsuits by Trump and his allies failed. Georgia's full hand recount affirmed Biden's lead (Nov. 19, 2020). The GOP-commissioned Cyber Ninjas review of Maricopa County, Arizona also found Biden won (Sept. 2021). An AP review of six battleground states found fewer than 475 potential fraud cases, far too few to tip the election.

Sources

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