No more conversation about Trump really winning or massive voter fraud unless there is hard evidence and not just speculation, outlandish theories or false allegations which is all that's been offered so far. Of course, what can be expected from someone like Trump who never met a lie he couldn't use. But let's see the real evidence. Otherwise, it is time to shut up and move on.
Arizona, the "La-La Land" Of Voter Conspiracy Theories
Even the theoretical possibilities that are being put forth now are laughable. In Arizona, which has somehow become the La-La Land of voter fraud conspiracy theories, the ridiculousness of having a Trump supporter spend Trump supporter contributions on an effort to find voter fraud has turned into a comedy of errors. These "auditors", who call themselves "Cyber Ninjas" have had to go back to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, like kindergartners go to their teachers with questions about everything, how to operate the machinery, how to access the voter registration database, how to tell if someone voted or not, how to tell the difference between mail-in ballots and drop-box ballots, where the verification lists were kept, and on and on.
The other two full audits conducted in Arizona, by reputable, certified vote auditors, canvassed about ten times as many ballots as the Ninjas have been able to count, verified addresses and registration records, signatures and other identification in about ten days. They did indeed find several cases of "voter fraud," about the usual number for an election and predictably, neither candidate actually benefitted from it. The Ninjas have demonstrated their incompetence to the point where over 85% of Arizona voters don't believe their results will be accurate or trustworthy. That's based on their bumbling incompetence, not on the fact that the $6 million they collected to pay for the audit came from Trump campaign contributors, though the state senate did kick in $150,000 of the taxpayer's money.
Their results, long past due, are invalid and good for nothing. The state should ask for their money back because no product was delivered by the deadline. They are dragging it out to try and bilk some Trump supporters for more money, which is the only remaining purpose of the whole futile effort. They have cost Maricopa county taxpayers additional hundreds of thousands of dollars because the county can no longer use the voting machines or ballot counting machines because the Ninjas have compromised the operating codes.
Now, there's a real estate agent in the Phoenix area claiming to have discovered that thousands of mail-in ballots came from vacant lots. That claim was based on their use of google maps showing swaths of desert with the addresses where the ballots came from. Problem is, Arizona is a fast-growing state and since the maps and satellite photos used to make this determination came out, houses have been built on the land that previous maps showed to be vacant. Oops. And indeed, the very first case of "fraud" that was introduced turned out to be a new house with two residents who legitimately mailed in their ballots from that location, along with thousands of others in the neighborhood, many of whom voted for Trump.
Other addresses identified as "vacant lots" were in a trailer park. Uh, do we have to explain what a "mobile" home is?
This is typical of the stuff that is passing for "evidence" of massive voter fraud. To say that it lacks credibility is an understatement. This is not a lack of credibility, this is stupidity and ignorance on a historic scale.
It's Like Taking Candy From a Baby
The image of the Trump baby hot air balloon created by the British pops into mind when this subject comes up for discussion. Trump whined and belly-ached about "massive voter fraud" and everyone being out to get him and deny him a legitimate election for the whole time he was in office. Most people realize that's just subterfuge to distract from the facts of the Mueller investigation and from his own meddling with the election to fix the results in his own favor.
With all of Trump's blabber and whining, you would think that Republicans, especially those who were in charge of state elections and ballot counting, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where he focused his complaints, would have been keeping out a watchful eye to catch any attempts, and to grab hold of the evidence. But when Giuliani and Powell, Trump's primary attorneys in these challenges, went to court, they had allegations but no credible evidence. That leads to two possible conclusions. One, as hard as they were looking for it, the Republicans found no evidence of "massive voter fraud." Or, two, the Republicans who were on the front lines in the battleground states and who had responsibility for verifying the vote count and certifying the results are the most gullible and easily fooled people in the world.
And in the follow up after the election, the Trump claims meet with a whole lot more credibility problems.
They lost the most credibility in Michigan. With the help of a woman named Melissa Carone, a Trumpie nut case who somehow got in front of a camera, they made a spectacle out of their phony presentation that will provide Democratic candidate campaigns with lots of footage for a long time. At the very moment Carone was claiming that the poll signature books were off by over 30,000 from the actual number of ballots being cast, a state representative had the poll books in hand and observed that they were off, but only by a very small number, consistent with normal clerical error in an election.
Producing a witness who testified to the fact that they saw "something strange" going on with ballots in Edison County, Michigan was another clue that the fraud being committed was coming from Trump, not the Democrats. Sidney Powell produced a witness who claimed that Biden received "more than 100% of the votes at 5:59 PM EST on November 4, and again he received 99.61% of the votes at 2:23 PM EST on November 5. These allocations are cause for concern and indicate fraud."
I guess that you don't have to know much about geography to be a lawyer, huh? Was there no one in that whole herd of Trump's legal team who could have told Powell that there is no Edison County in Michigan before the witness went to court and made them all look like, well, stupid Republicans?
Such is the state of the credibility of Trump claims of "massive voter fraud."
It's Pointless, No Evidence Exists, But They're Going to Keep Looking
Constitutionally, the 2020 election is done, over, certified, in the books and cannot be overturned or undone. That deadline passed in January. Continuing to search is evidence of a lack of Constitutional and legal knowledge that is laughable in one sense, frightening and dangerous in the sense that many of those who keep pushing this narrative are lawyers, politicians and a former President of the United States. They should know better. Most of them, except Trump, probably do. Most Americans are incredibly ignorant when it comes to civics, government and their Constitution, so this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the credibility of the election process. And that is a major threat to our democracy that must be stopped in its tracks right now.
This week, Pennsylvania is launching a "forensic audit" of some of its ballots. No one really knows exactly what that means, though the implication is that somehow legitimate ballots were replaced with counterfeit ones. The Cyber Ninja audit in Arizona came complete with special cameras to detect "bamboo fibers" in the paper, implying that some ballots may have come from China. Counterfeit ballots from China is a common Trumpie conspiracy theory. In Pennsylvania, every ballot, whether cast at a computer screen or by pen at home and mailed in, has a unique bar code. No counterfeit ballot could get through the counting machine because it couldn't match the bar code of the voter's registration number. But some people are incredibly ignorant, insensate and gullible.
If You're Republican, This Will Hurt, But Do It Anyway
Joe Biden won the election legitimately and he is the legally and legitimately elected President of the United States. Republicans who still think Trump won need to say that sentence one hundred times. If the words can't be forced out, then write it a hundred times like your teacher used to make you do.
Four years of Trump was all the Democrats needed to get a large majority of independent voters on board, and a slice of the GOP as well, and beat Trump into the ground. The shenanigans that went on in 2016 and the evidence from the Mueller investigation motivated Democratic party leadership to work to get a voter turnout that couldn't be challenged by claims of voter fraud and that's what they got. Biden got a majority of the popular vote, 5% more than Trump, and over 81 million votes. His campaign strategy was to carry the states Clinton won in 2016, and bring back the blue wall in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he achieved that, along with the added bonuses of narrow wins in Georgia and Arizona.
Every challenge to the legitimacy of the vote total was thoroughly investigated, largely because Republicans were the majority and in charge of the election process and ballot counting in the states where Trump's campaign challenged the results. Legitimate audits and recounts, as required by law, were conducted. And though there is always voter "fraud" along with clerical error, none of the recounts or audits conducted by certified firms and experts turned up any evidence of "massive voter fraud" on a scale that would change the expressed will of the voters.
All of the Republican observers, election officials, secretaries of state and poll watchers and workers verified the reports, that there was no "massive voter fraud," and that the certified results of the election that we see represent the actual numbers and the true will of the voters. Trump knows that, his legal team knows it, but most of his base still live in some kind of La-La Land and they will believe whatever they choose to believe, including some of the most outlandish and discredited claims of massive voter fraud that are made.
Louder and Larger Opposition
The only way that this will be brought to a conclusion is for the majority who are tired and fed up with it to take action to put it to an end. Every time there is an opportunity to cast a ballot, go and vote and make sure you find out if a Trumpie is running to vote against them. Find a few extra dollars here and there and send it to the DNC through either Act Blue or directly. Speak up every time you have a chance to discredit all of this crap whenever you are in a position to do so. Write letters to the editor to your local newspaper or get on the call in shows.
If there's a Trumpie rally near you, find out about the counter-protest and join it. A friend of mine put up some social media posts from a counter-protest he attended at a recent Trump rally and there were more counter-protesters than Trumpies going to the rally. One of the claims that Trumpies make as evidence of voter fraud is that Trump had rallies and more people showed up than Biden, who had "drive in" rallies and far less people. Of course, that is as ignorant and stupid as it sounds, but at Trump rallies on this side of the election, the counter-protests have been either equal in number or bigger, in some cases much bigger. Yes, there really were 81 million people who voted for Biden and they are actual voters who aren't going to switch.
And VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
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