For over a month, we have endured a constant drumbeat of officials at the highest level claiming that Democracy itself is under attack, and that our entire system of government is subverted. So powerful has this message been that nearly a third of Americans believe that the election was rigged, or stolen, or forged, and they demand action, any action to right this wrong. Unfortunately, they are cheering the biggest threat to the system, and turning a blind eye to an actual attempt to steal the election, playing out right in front of them.
Election fraud is a serious accusation, and every official has not just a right, but a duty, to ensure that it is not occuring. There is nothing wrong with looking into such claims to see if they have merit. Yet we have gone beyond investigating fraud, to attempting to perpetuate it. Right now, Donald Trump is the only one attempting to steal the election.
His court room tactics were shameful enough. He presented witnesses in Michigan that he knew to be perjurers alleging claims that they knew to be baseless, and that were contradicted by video evidence and affidavits from other Republican observers. In Arizona, they submitted online affidavits that could not be corroborated, even though the online process was so painfully tainted that it produced nothing by spam and obvious lies. They brought dozens of witnesses into court in every contested state to testify to things that they had absolutely no knowledge of. https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/trump-campaign-lawyer-admits-to-judge-our-search-for-evidence-of-fraud-produced-obvious-lies-and-spam/ He presented statistics claiming overvotes, dead people voting, and that a Biden victory was simply not numerically possible. The problem is, all of these claims are contrary to government voting rolls. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55016029 And some of the "Experts" are Trump cronies.
Suborning perjury and attempting to mislead a court are criminal offenses. Yet, the misconduct has not stopped there. Trump and his team have gone further, trying to disenfranchise millions of legal voters, and even entire states, on the most trivial of errors. This attempt to simply erase states or counties where he lost is the definition of stealing an election.
In Arizona, his team identified a trivial 192 messy ballots (all of which were counted for him), to say that the entire state should be thrown out. (See the law and order article above.) In Pennsylvania, the team argued that all ballots for President-Elect Joe Biden should be thrown out if minor errors could be found, despite the Trump teams admission that all the ballots were legally cast by eligible voters. https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/trump-campaign-attorney-admits-in-court-that-there-are-no-fraud-or-eligibility-concerns-over-philadelphia-voters/ Guilliani tried to have the entire state thrown out because two Republican voters were disenfranchised....by state Republican officials. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-pennsylvania-elections-philadelphia-d9c96c4593ec278f3b1d4bc564068df6 In Michigan, Trump's team simply wanted all mail in ballots, but only those for Biden, tossed.
Judges across the political spectrum, including Trump's own apointees have rejected these shameful attempts to subvert the Constitution and state election laws. And for good cause. Trump's lawyers have repeatedly admitted that they have no evidence of fraud, and that none of their challenges would have changed the outcome in any of the states they are filing challenges in. And yet, they still demand to be declared the winners, and to have all contrary votes thrown out, by any means necessary. Judges have been left aghast at the blatant demands to ignore the will of the people, in a shameless and transparent attempt to appoint Trump President again, in violation of the law.
And, yet, he has not stopped. His team is attempting to have Legislatures in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan simply overrule the people, and award him the state's electoral college vote. This is, not surprisingly, illegal in every state that he is requesting it in. Based on anonymous tips, online gossip, and "data anaylsis" which simply makes broad claims that have no evidence to support them, Trump demands that any result that doesn't return him to the throne be vacated. And, in the event that the states won't roll over and give him what he wants, he has no problem asking Congress to simply vacate all offending votes. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/30/republicans-overturn-electoral-college-441459
While Trump has promised evidence of widespread fraud, he has brought forward none. Widespread fraud has dwindled to any fraud, no matter how minute, and then waned further to errors or mistakes, and finally, anything we don't like. Despite the broad claims that he was "robbed" in 2020, Trump is the only one trying to steal votes. And he's doing it in broad daylight.
If the shoes were reversed, as they were in 2016, Republicans would be crying bloody murder. And rightfully so. Yet, because the candidate has an R behind his name on the ballot, 73% of Republicans are glomming on to every far fetched and ludicrous anonymous internet story, no matter how obviously false, to ignore that Trump is the bad guy in this tale. He, and he alone, is trying to undermine democracy and degrade our system. And this plain disregard of the law and Constitution is being cheered by his followers, like they are fans at a football game.
Allowing this clown to continue to perform, long after he should've stepped off the stage, is the real threat to our system. And, if it is allowed to succeed, it will set a dangerous precedent that can only backfire once the Democrats wrest power back.
