Why have U.S. politicians (mostly Republican, it seems) fought election fraud in the courts instead of using their following of voters to sign a recall petition against the candidates they thought were fraudulently elected?
I have not heard of a single case of this. Has it occurred?
19 states have recall provisions; cf. the "Recall of State Officials" report of the National Council of State Legislatures (NCSL).
A legal challenge in court is a lot easier and has a lot better odds of success than a recall effort. Firstly there are provisions in most state recall laws that make a recall election a very difficult prospect to begin with. It is also a risky strategy to take.
Politicians rarely challenge elections results unless the results are close. When the results were close and almost evenly split the chances of winning a recall election are pretty low. By the time it would be taking place the one who is in office already has the power of incumbency on his side. The challenger just looks like a sore loser to the voters. Furthermore it would be a bad precedent for a candidate to set. It would put his own seat in on shaky grounds. Even if the incumbent is ousted what is to prevent him from doing the exact same thing and starting a recall election right after he is ousted?
There have been some recall attempts. The most well publicized was the attempt to recall Governor Newsom of California.
But there are big problems with a recall. First of all, the laws usually deliberately make recall efforts difficult. If it was easy to recall the winner of an election, then losers would do it all the time. If one could just say, "I think we should have a do-over of this election" and he would get it, then whoever lost would always call for a re-call. He might win, and if he loses, he's no worse off, right?
Second, if the first election was tainted by election fraud, what would make anyone think that a recall would not be equally tainted? If the people in power manipulated the system to make sure their guy won once, what would stop them from just doing it again? If the problem is election fraud, just doing the election again with the same rules solves nothing. You need to first change the rules to make fraud more difficult.
Just by the way, I've heard many Democrats say, "We refuse to investigate charges of election fraud, because there is no evidence." But how would there be any evidence if you refuse to investigate? That's the point of an investigation: to find evidence one way or the other.
I've also heard many Democrats say, "Our elections today are the most secure in history. Election fraud is impossible. And besides, most of the fraud has been by Republicans." But the second argument contradicts the first. If fraud is impossible today, than how did Republicans pull it off? If Republicans have succeeded at committing fraud, then how do we know that Democrats did not also engage in fraud and just not get caught? And if Republicans have engaged in fraud, then why are you against regulations to make fraud more difficult? If it's the Republicans who are committing all the fraud, wouldn't preventing fraud benefit your side?
When someone tells me, "We refuse to investigate because we already know the answer", that makes me very suspicious. And when someone says, "Anyone who questions whether the election was legitimate is threatening our democracy", that makes me SUPER suspicious.
