# 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. with a 29:00 mm:ss podcast excerpted from the companion video released to the fortnightly "Media & Democracy" show syndicated for the Pacifica Radio Network of over 200 community radio stations.
    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 and treating others with respect.
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.

## Greg Palast

Palast is known for his investigative reports for The Guardian and his books including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2002); 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. 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.

## Claim that "Trump lost, vote suppression won"

A 2025-02-07 article by Thom Hartmann on gregpalast.com claims, "Greg Palast proved that Jim Crow tactics cost Vice President Harris 3.56 million votes, four states—and the presidency.": "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."
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 | new vote totals | additional votes if all disfranchised votes had been cast and counted | 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. Unfortunately, it's not obvious where Pakman got his numbers, either.

## The threat

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

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