Yeah, obviously I disagree. Suggesting that the election process is imperfect? Yep, absolutely. That's inevitable, right? With miliions upon millions of votes, some degree of inaccuracy is inevitable. And I agree that this should be taken seriously. There's been talk about voting irregularities and fraud in countless elections. Al Gore had a far better claim than anybody else I can think of.

But people who think the election was rigged? Who claim that Donald Trump actually won and that there was a deliberate Democrat conspiracy to cheat that was successful yet untraceable (except to Trump even before the election) nationwide? The people overlooking the fact that he was unable to produce a single piece of evidence that wasn't thrown out by the many Republican judges who presided over his legal challenges? That the calls he made to Georgia officials trying to bribe his way to an extra 11,000 votes should have completely settled the question of his resepct for election integrity? That this woman was the best witness they were able to produce? That Trump actually admitted he planned to simply declare victory if the votes were close on election night (note that when he did exactly that, he was suddenly absolutely confident in the numbers that temporarily showed him ahead)?

Yep, that's self-delusion on the scale of anything else I can think of (if you have any evidence to support the claim that all of this makes no difference and that he has a real case, by all means share).

The mechanism for all self-delusion is ultimately the same; you're confronted with a fact that conflicts with your preferred world view, you repeatedly ignore all further evidence that supports it, and you cling to anything, even an obvious lie, that contradicts it. That seems to very clearly be what happened in the case of those claiming the election was rigged. Or more to the point, as another commenter highlighted, it’s a way of signalling their membership in a certain ideological set.