It seems to me I have read that there was voter fraud in his election, and Ford chose not to put the country through the debacle that Gore did.
Have you ever heard of any election that the democrats did not commit voter fraud?
According to the official figures, Carter had a plurality of more than 1.6 million popular votes in 1976, but he had only a 297-240 edge in the electoral college (one Republican elector voted for Reagan, but presumably would have voted for Ford if his vote would have made a difference). Carter won Ohio by 11,116 votes and Wisconsin by 35,245 votes; if Ford had carried those two states he would have had a majority of the electoral votes. It certainly seems possible there could have been 11,117 fraudulent votes counted in Ohio; could there have been 35,246 fraudulent votes in Wisconsin?
It's possible that some other scenarios with small shifts of votes would have given Ford the victory in 1976 (leaving out Wisconsin). To be sure there were some states he carried by narrow margins.