AUGUSTA, Maine — After eight straight years as Maine’s Secretary of State, Matt Dunlap has to pack up and move everything in his office, including his typewriter. Yes, he has a typewriter and it’s not just for show—he actually uses it.
Term limits are forcing him out and he won’t be going far, only a few hundred yards away to another office in the State House complex and his new job as State Auditor. With the dust still not settled from the presidential election, Dunlap remains—for a few more days, until his term ends—the official responsible for overseeing elections in Maine.
Which brings us to the baseless accusations President Trump and his supporters have repeatedly made that the 2020 election was rigged, stolen, fraudulent. In court, his lawyers’ unsubstantiated allegations have been shot down by judges across the country, including judges appointed by Trump himself.
“We have seen almost no cases of demonstrated, actual voter-level fraud or organizational fraud,” Dunlap says, speaking of the country as a whole. That echoes what the U.S. Attorney General and election officials in every state have said. Yet those statements have failed to convince millions of Americans that the election was on the level. So what would Dunlap say to a skeptic?
“I would tell them to show me a case,” he answers. “Show me one case. And not something copied and pasted off the internet, but an actual, demonstrated case where fraud was uncovered.”
Why do so many people believe there was fraud in the election when there is no evidence of it? Dunlap has given this question some thought. “A lot of people were not happy with the outcome of the election, which does not mean it was conducted in an unfair manner,” he says. “It’s just that your candidate didn’t win.”