Ok.
Some nuance:
2000 Gore V Bush. The race was so close it came down to one state, Florida. Bush was declared winner eventually by about 500 votes and crucially, Gore conceded. In the post-analysis, there were about 600 late / unsigned / incorrect ballots that were for Bush that should have been discounted PLUS about 2000 votes were flipped away from Gore by a machine error.*(see butterfly ballot case - printing machine error / layout caused confusion)
Al Gore, a screaming lefty democrat, should have won the 2000 election.
Why is this important? This is just around 9/11 and Iraq and Bin Laden time. Would Al Gore have been so ready to go to war? With millions displaced / killed, billions of dollars of damage and nations turned upside down. The after effects in the Middle East still being played out today.
I say this as a Republican supporter but also because I’m not entrenched in prejudice and because I’m a realist: The democrats should have won that election. The few votes that were possibly illegal / unverified changed the course of history.
Let me double down:
1924. Ladywood Birmingham. (Stop rolling your eyes - you’ll get there). Unionist candidate (Tory) beat the Labour candidate after a few recounts. First count Tory won by about 7 votes, then another count Labour won by about 2 and then after an accusation of some Labour votes disappearing (Tory supporter shoved them up their coat, allegedly), the Tory candidate won.
Why is this important? The Tory was Neville Chamberlain and the Labour candidate was Oswald Mosley. Mosley at the time (1924) was tipped to be next PM (have in mind that the guy who later attended Mosley’s wedding - Hitler was up to all sorts in Germany at the time). Imagine Mosley being still on course to be PM around this time and Chamberlain out of office. As it happened, Mosely was out of parliament and lost momentum.
A handful of votes……
Anyone that says a few dodgy votes don’t make a difference - uneducated. Anyone that says mistakes don’t happen in elections - complete moron. Anyone that doesn’t think that bad actors that try to influence elections for their own aims don’t exist - gullible.
I’ve just given pretty factual examples of where small margins make big differences. In those cases, the “left” were thwarted by the “right”.
88000 votes swung the 2020 election. Entrenched dribblers started frothing when I mentioned that I’d like to see the final vote count for 2024 and see some expert analysis of 2020. Gore and Bush, incidentally got 50m votes each. Obama 60 odd million. Biden 81m and now both candidates 70m odd. 2020 was a strange election with mainly postal voting and therefore ID checks and so on quite difficult to audit.
I know it makes me a huge conspiracy theorist to even want to look at the figures of 100% honest squeaky clean 10% Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Nonetheless, so confident that everything was above board that Biden is now considering pardoning and giving immunity to those that certified the election.
Anyway, call me a crackpot now if you like but keep your fingers crossed that real evidence doesn’t come out that 2020 wasn’t straight.
To conclude:
Every vote counts.
Illegitimate votes and voting machine errors have changed the course of history.
Progressives lost out in the above.
Voter ID is important because it reduces the chance of fraud.