Robust turnout far from ‘ fraud’
At this writing, the result of the 2020 presidential election is not known, though former Vice President Joe Biden is ahead.
What is also ahead, though, is a precarious time. It should not be so, but given President Donald Trump’s nature to characterize any competition he might not win as “fraud,” we’re in for a nasty ride.
The virus that will disrupt lives — and end some — will be with us for the foreseeable future. Only in this twisted version of “leadership” would the simple, effective wearing of masks have degenerated into yet another way to divide people.
That there will be recounts in the aftermath of this election is a given. Recounts are not unusual. They are a routine part of the electoral process. Generally, they are allowed when the margin of victory falls within a specified, very narrow percentage.
Bogus cries of “fraud” are another thing.
There has been no more fraud in this election than there was in 2016, when the president claimed that “millions” of illegal ballots had been cast. That, of course, could be the only possible reason for Donald Trump losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
So, the song has not changed. Trump still claims that this election is rife with “fraud,” especially so since so much of the voting was done in absentia through mail- in ballots. Naturally, the danger of exposure to COVID- 19 was one of the reasons why so many voters chose to use the mail.
Each of the 48 Election Days I have worked as a reporter, the day is always ripe with a building sense of excitement. This is the first Election Day on which I also felt a twinge of dread.
Cruising the Bridgeport polling places Tuesday afternoon — old habits die hard — I saw no weird behavior. The EDO Trump Army was nowhere visible. The only thing unusual were lines outside some Bridgeport schools in midafternoon. They would surely get longer as night fell.
Since then, the days of torture: He’s down. No, wait, he’s up. If this … If that …
But through it all has been the malicious presidential drumbeat of “fraud.”
Though Trump has been screaming that his team has no access to the tallying process, it’s simply another canard.
All across the country, in every one of the tens of thousands of polling precincts, party loyalists are on hand. To begin with, Democrat and Republican partisans are at the polling locations. Checking their lists and checking them twice. If they suspect something, trust me, they pipe up.
The same thing happens when the counting goes on. If there are questions or suspicions about the validity of a ballot, judgments to be made in some circumstance about a voter’s intent, representatives of all parties will weigh in and make a decision.
Provisional ballots are given to people whose eligibility might be in question. Those ballots are not counted — or disqualified — until after the question has been resolved.
Fraud? Stolen election? Well, if you’ll buy a nationwide conspiracy of municipal and state clerks, attorneys general, governors, secretaries of the state, poll volunteers, postal workers, and a battalion of others, maybe.
The results in this election are slow in coming because of the unprecedented volume of envelopes that have to be opened, recorded, stamped, examined and, finally, counted. Period.
That, no matter, how long it takes, is not “fraud.” No matter how loud, or how many times, the president says it is so. In fact, the length of the process, the volume of the numbers, is a reassuring sign of a robust democracy. Have you ever — before this year — heard an American president make a claim of “fraud” in an election?
Me either.
After all, early Wednesday morning, the president declared victory. Thankfully, the system here doesn’t work that way. At the end of the day — the week? The month? — the voters will decide who won the election.
It’s then that the real work begins.