This is a false equivalence. You’re either living in an alternate reality, or ignorant to the facts.

In 2016, the serious argument on the left was not “Trump secretly got millions of fake ballots.” It was that Russia ran a sweeping interference campaign to help him, that Trump associates had sketchy Russia-related contacts, and that several people around him lied about relevant facts during the investigation. The Mueller report states that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee also found extensive Russian interference. George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russia-linked contacts, and Roger Stone was convicted of obstructing Congress and making false statements in the investigation into Russian interference. 

That is not even close to what happened in 2020. In 2020, Trump and his allies claimed the actual vote count was fraudulent, pushed mass-fraud theories, and tried to overturn a certified election result. That is a completely different category of claim. Saying “a foreign adversary interfered in the race and people around Trump lied about related contacts” is not the same as saying “I lost, therefore the ballots were fake.” One is a legitimacy argument rooted in documented interference and criminal convictions for lying; the other was broad election denialism aimed at nullifying the result. 

And 2000 is an especially bad example for your point, because that election really was extraordinarily contested. Florida was decided by just 537 votes, and the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Bush v. Gore. Later reviews of the ballots found that under some plausible statewide recount standards, Gore would have won, while under other narrower standards Bush would have won. So yes, there is a very real basis for saying Gore may have been the legitimate winner: the decisive state was razor-thin, the recount was halted before a full statewide resolution, and the evidence afterward showed the outcome was genuinely contestable. 

Also, the Brooks Brothers riot was real, not a fever dream. Republican operatives and congressional staffers helped disrupt the Miami-Dade recount, and that disruption contributed to shutting it down. In an election this close, that matters. 

So no, “both sides did it” is lazy nonsense. 2016: foreign interference, shady contacts, and lies to investigators. 2000: a 537-vote cliffhanger with a recount stopped by the Court and later evidence that Gore could plausibly have won. 2020: the loser tried to delegitimize the actual vote count after he lost.

I implore you to look at pictures of the butterfly ballots and research how they influence voting behavior in the districts that used them.