To my Republican Friends, All Votes are Going to be Counted and Biden Will Win
Two stories were reported before the 2020 Presidential election that played out the night of the election were about a red mirage, and about Donald Trump claiming victory the night of the election.
About two months before election day, it was reported that election analysts had expected a “red mirage”, a scenario where early votes appeared to show Trump winning decisively because Democrats encouraged voters to vote by mail and Trump had encouraged his voters to vote in person on Election Day due to alleged mail-in voting fraud (in spite of the fact that he had voted by mail, as does his Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany). The theory, which proved true, is that due to the fact that many of the midwestern swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which were expected to decide the election wouldn’t begin counting mail-in ballots until election day or later and this would take several days to count them all, and since these were mostly Democratic votes, Biden would overtake Trump’s lead in the vote count.
The other is that it was reported by sources close to the President that he would claim victory on election night, regardless of the vote count. On election night, Biden gave a speech, at that time down in the count, but closing the gap, telling his supporters to be patient and expressing optimism that he would win (without outright claiming victory). Trump then made a speech where he claimed victory, claimed the election was being stolen, fraudulent votes were being counted and they needed to stop the count in state where he was at the time ahead, in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and that he had won those states. He also claimed he wanted to continue counting in states he was behind, like Arizona and Nevada.
The speech was astounding in that he was wanting to count votes where doing so would benefit him and not count votes where stopping would benefit him. Also, astounding, he was claiming fraud where none existed. His lawyers have gone to court on numerous frivolous claims and have effectively lost on all of them because they can’t prove the fraud they are claiming.
He later on twitter “claimed” certain states that he had not won and which many had not finished counting, as if he were claiming “Shotgun” when riding in a car. “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact,.there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!” No credible reports of secretly dumped ballots have been reported and Trump hasn’t even alleged it in court. Trump claiming states has no legal bearing on the election.
By early Wednesday morning, Fox News, which is the most Republican-friendly of the major news outlets, had called Arizona for Biden as well as Nebraska’s second congressional district, which has a single electoral vote. Someone on Twitter pointed out that if Biden won Nevada, where he was ahead, and if he caught up in Wisconsin and Michigan, which seemed highly likely, Biden would reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes to win. That is without Pennsylvania and without Georgia, which was an unexpected and welcomed surprise.
When the election was called for Biden by media outlets before all votes were counted, I heard concern from Trump supporters that they had declared a winner without counting all votes. It should be noted that every presidential election I’ve voted in (all since 1988) has been called by media outlets by Wednesday, the day after the election, except 2000, which because of recounts, court challenges that went to the Supreme Court and a narrow 537-vote margin was not called for 7 weeks. In all of those cases, a winner had been projected by the media before all votes were counted (and even received, since some states allow a few extra days to receive mail-in ballots, as long as they are postmarked by election day.
While Republicans have spent four years claiming Hillary Clinton did not accept the results of the 2016 election, she conceded publicly the following morning and never requested a recount or filed any court cases to prevent election results from being certified or to throw out votes. Trump and other Republicans have.
There are a great many reasons I believe Trump should not have been elected President, even though I was a Republican prior to his election and had always voted for Republican candidates, but this is arguably the most important one. Trump claimed in 2016 the election was rigged and refused to guarantee he would abide by the results unless he won. Even after he won in the electoral vote, the official way Presidents are chosen, he took personal offense to being less popular than Hillary Clinton and losing in the popular vote by about 2.8 million votes and claimed falsely that 3–5 million people illegally voted in 2016 and abused the office of the presidency by creating a commission to prove his claim. They failed to find such evidence.
Now he is again making similar claims after having falsely claimed mail-in balloting is rigged and that the only way he would lose is if it is stolen. It has been an effort by Russia to create divisions in the United States and Trump is a useful fool to that effect. The United States intelligence community determined Russia had hacked the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign and released private emails (similar to what the Watergate burglary was about), the Mueller Report found Russia had interfered in our election in “a sweeping and systematic fashion” and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence chaired by Republican Marco Rubio also reached this conclusion.
Trump, on the world stage in Helsinki, Finland at a press conference with Putin said “was extremely strong and powerful in his denial”. This is like saying the devil was very strong in his denial about tempting Adam and Eve. John McCain, lifelong Republican and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee described Trump’s appearance with Putin “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory… No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad.”
Unfortunately, the Republican Party has largely adopted the position of sore losers and in spite of the lack of evidence of fraud, rejects the results and refuses to acknowledge Biden is the winner. Julie Moroney, a non-partisan poll challenger in Detroit, demonstrated the bad faith position Republicans are taking, tweeting out a video by The Recount with pro-Trump protesters chanting “Count the Vote” in Arizona juxtaposed with those in Michigan chating “Stop the Count”. She tells how a GOP challenger contested a ballot because it “looked sticky”. She mentioned that after Biden passed Trump in the count and the state was called for Biden, Republican challengers began to challenge every vote, even without pretending to have a reason and that they were passing around the message to other Republican poll challengers to this effect.
Another poll challengers, Danielle L. McGuire, wrote about her experience with poorly-trained Republican poll watchers who saw everything that was occurring as an indication of fraud, even when the process was explained to them. As she said, “It was something to behold: GOP challengers were literally mistaking their own uncertainty or lack of knowledge about the process with voter fraud and worker malfeasance.” She tweeted about this as well, regarding the 234-page stack of affidavits by GOP poll challengers which do not even generally allege fraud.
Evelyn Smith, who was a vote counter in Ann Arbor, MI, wrote about how it would be virtually impossible to fraudulently generate even a single ballot, let alone the massive amount of fraud Republicans are alleging. As she also mentioned these conspiracy theories are dangerous and divisive. They erode trust in our democracy and this is why our adversaries are promoting them. It’s unfortunate for us, however, that we have a President and a political party that is unwilling to accept defeat and is spreading this misinformation.
It’s time for Trump and the Republican Party to accept defeat and support and acknowledge Joe Biden as President.
