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Palast says Trump lost, vote suppression won the 2024 elections

This is a discussion of a Zoom interview recorded 2025-02-06 with Greg Palast about his claim that "Trump lost, vote suppression won" the 2024 US presidential election.[1] with a 29:00 mm:ss podcast excerpted from the companion video released to the fortnightly "Media & Democracy" show[2] syndicated for the Pacifica Radio[3] Network of over 200 community radio stations.[4]
It is posted here to invite others to contribute other perspectives, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view while citing credible sources[5] and treating others with respect.[6]

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Investigative journalist Greg Palast discusses his claim that "Trump lost, vote suppression won" the 2024 US presidential election.
29:00 mm:ss podcast of the interview recorded 2025-02-06 with Investigative journalist Greg Palast regarding his claim that "Trump lost, vote suppression won" the 2024 US presidential election.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast claims that Kamala Harris would have won the 2024 US presidential election without massive vote suppression by Republicans in many different States. He was interviewed by Spencer Graves.[7]

Greg Palast

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Palast is known for his investigative reports for The Guardian and his books including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002);[8] Democracy and Regulation (2003); Armed Madhouse (2006, 2007), Vultures Picnic (2011); Billionaires and Ballot Bandits (2012); and How Trump Stole 2020 (2020). He has also provided evidence for numerous lawsuits.[9] Some of this is discussed in a recent movie Vigilantes, Inc., America's new vote suppression hitmen, 1:20 h:mm, which can be watched for free from his website, gregpalast.com.[10]

Claim that "Trump lost, vote suppression won"

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A 2025-02-07 article by Thom Hartmann on gregpalast.com[11] claims, "Greg Palast proved that Jim Crow tactics cost Vice President Harris 3.56 million votes, four states—and the presidency.":[12] "If all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes."[1]

His claims include the following numbers:

number cum % of total what
4,776,706 4,776,706 40.01% voters wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission
2,121,000 6,897,706 17.77% mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due)
585,000 7,482,706 4.90% ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
1,216,000 8,698,706 10.19% “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
3,240,000 11,938,706 27.14% new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

Unfortunately, it's not obvious how Palast got from these and other claims to his final conclusions. We get close to his numbers by assuming that Harris got 65% of the 12 million suppressed votes and Trump got the rest:

Trump Harris Trump margin of victory
77,302,580 75,017,613 2,284,967
new vote totals additional votes if all disfranchised votes had been cast and counted
Trump Harris Trump margin of victory Trump Harris % for Harris
83,271,933 80,986,966 2,284,967 5,969,353 5,969,353 50%
82,078,062 82,180,837 -102,774 4,775,482 7,163,224 60%
81,481,127 82,777,772 -1,296,645 4,178,547 7,760,159 65%
80,884,192 83,374,707 -2,490,515 3,581,612 8,357,094 70%

Sadly, it is not obvious where Palast got his numbers. David Pakman notes that Palast does not adequately document how he got his numbers, saying that Palast's conclusions do not hold if some sources are replaced by others that Pakman claims are more credible.[13] Unfortunately, it's not obvious where Pakman got his numbers, either.

The threat

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Internet company executives have knowingly increased political polarization and violence including the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, because doing otherwise might have reduced their profits. Documentation of this is summarized in Category:Media reform to improve democracy, especially "Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen says".

Discussion

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[Interested readers are invite to comment here, subject to the Wikimedia rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources[5] and treating others with respect.[6]]

Notes

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Palast (2025).
  2. ↑ Media & Democracy, Director: Spencer Graves, Pacifica Radio, Wikidata Q127839818{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ↑ Pacifica Radio, Wikidata Q2045587
  4. ↑ List of Pacifica Radio stations and affiliates, Wikidata Q6593294
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 The rules of writing from a neutral point of view citing credible sources may not be enforced on other parts of Wikiversity. However, they can facilitate dialog between people with dramatically different beliefs
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Wikiversity asks contributors to assume good faith, similar to Wikipedia. The rule in Wikinews is different: Contributors there are asked to "Don't assume things; be skeptical about everything." That's wise. However, we should still treat others with respect while being skeptical.
  7. ↑ Spencer Graves, Wikidata Q56452480
  8. ↑ See also the documentary film with that title, Palast and Ambrose (2016).
  9. ↑ The claim that Palast "has also provided evidence for numerous lawsuits" was confirmed by a search in "RECAP archive" inside CourtListener.com for "Palast" in "all jurisdictions", following the procedure outlined in "Researching US federal court documents". Such a search on 2025-02-10 returned 70 cases. The first was "Palast v. Kemp (N.D. Ga. 2018) Docket Number: 1:18-cv-04809", which was filed by Greg Palast against Brian Kemp in his capacity as the 27th Secretary of State of Georgia. Six more of the first ten cited investigations by Greg Palast; the remaining of the first ten seemed to cite others named "Palast". Without reviewing all 70, this suggests that a large majority of those cases probably also involved Greg Palast either directly or indirectly. We also refined this search to the Northern federal district of Georgia by clicking on "Select Jurisdictions" below "Refine Your Query" in the upper left, then clicked, "Clear All", then "Federal District", and "N.D. Georgia", then "Apply" in the lower right. This identified six cases. The first was Palast v. Kemp, mentioned above. The remaining five of those six were filed by other parties, with Grep Palast mentioned in the summary.
  10. ↑ Scheen et al. (2025).
  11. ↑ Greg Palast Investigative Journalism, Wikidata Q132194439
  12. ↑ Hartmann (2025).
  13. ↑ Pakman (2025).

Bibliography

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