So we know that Trump and his attorneys promoted claims of election fraud often with either no proof or with proof already deemed insufficient (or worse, fabricated) to support the claims. Lawyers are being held to account for those falsehoods. Trump probably never will be.
But now there is a pattern of these sorts of claims made by losing GOPers. Kari Lake in Arizona is a prominent example. There are others, some of them quite extreme:
Failed GOP candidate arrested on suspicion of orchestrating shootings at homes of Democrats in New Mexico, police say | CNN
So it seems to me we have come to a point where a losing candidate who wants to promote a claim that the election result was wrong, or obtained through fraud, ought to have to meet a minimum threshold to do so. I personally think that if the claim is miscounting they should have to have a minimum of two affidavits from election officials explaining how the tabulation occurred. If it is a claim of fraud, I think they should have to have admissible evidence that at least 25 % of the vote differential was fraudulent. This does not mean someone speculating. This means examples or other extrinsic objective evidence of fraud.
And if a candidate promotes claims of either without meeting that criteria, there should be criminal or even civil penalties. Fines. Possible claims for defamation by the prevailing candidate.
I am open to alternative thresholds but it seems to me that clearly part of the problem here is that a lot of this gets perpetuated by at first a sweeping claim of fraud only to have it in the end be reduced to a small, finite number of examples and usually where the evidence is ambivalent at best.
An election loser has a right to protest it. But we are at a point where there needs to be some formality to that process so that disgruntled losers cannot withour cause or consequence undermine the very office they sought to hold.
