GOP set America up for ‘voter fraud’ hoax
Now investigations will just waste tax dollars
Comedian Dave Attell has an old line about watching a notoriously ribald “Girls Gone Wild” video: I like to play it backward, because then it looks like the girls have learned their lesson.
Similarly, if Americans were to watch last week’s election returns in reverse, they’d also learn a valuable lesson — that for months, the Republican plan has been to sow the exact sort of doubt in the election results they’re fraudulently pushing now.
As everyone knows by now, voting during the COVID-19 pandemic took place in two distinct ways based on ideology — Republicans largely voted in person on Election Day, while Democrats rushed to vote early and by mail.
Votes cast first counted last
In many of the most hotly contested states, the Election Day votes were counted first, making it appear President Donald Trump had surged to insurmountable leads in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But then the early votes started to be counted, and former Vice President Joe Biden managed to eclipse Trump in all three crucial states (although Pennsylvania is a commonwealth, as those of us glued to our televisions for days on end were constantly reminded).
In fact, the only reason the election looks close for some people is because of the mechanics of how the votes are being counted.
Because the votes cast first were counted last, it appeared as if Democrats were making a last-ditch effort to rob Trump of his prodigious leads. But if the tape were rewound and the early and mail-in ballots were counted first, it would have looked like Biden had destroyed Trump and the incumbent was making a valiant comeback.
This would be the model in Ohio, where the early votes were counted first. Early on Tuesday night, it appeared Biden would run away with the state, carrying an 11 percentage point lead with half the votes in. Then the Election Day vote poured in, and Trump ended up carrying the state by 8 points. (You will not be surprised to learn that the Trump team is not alleging any vote fraud in the overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning early vote in Ohio.)
Peanut butter and jelly
But now, because Trump is prone to boisterous tantrums, Republicans are forced to pretend the late surges in Biden votes are the result of nefarious machinations by Democrats — a plot so complex that liberals were able to steal the presidency from Trump but still contemporaneously hand House and Senate Republicans better-than-expected showings.
It is, of course, all nonsense. The votes cast are the votes cast, no matter what order in which they are counted. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is still a peanut butter and jelly sandwich regardless of whether you correctly apply the peanut butter first, or whether you’re a psychopath who dirties the knife with jelly first.
Clearly, the plot by Republicans all along was to force the early votes to be counted last and to try to portray the mail-in ballots as illegitimate. For months, Trump had been fomenting distrust in voting by mail — even though the president had done it himself and a number of states conducted their elections almost entirely by mail with no fraud. When asked in September whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump said, “Get rid of the ballots” and there would be a “very peaceful … continuation.”
“We want to make sure the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” he later said. “I don’t know that it can be with this whole situation — unsolicited ballots. They’re unsolicited; millions being sent to everybody. And we’ll see.”
Republicans in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania responded by filing lawsuits trying to prevent mail-in ballots that didn’t reach clerks by Election Day from being counted. And Trump’s team of attorneys, who evidently don’t know the difference between a fancy hotel and a landscaping company, are out carrying through on the whole fraud, alleging voting irregularities with zero evidence.
A cash grab by Trump Inc.
A number of Trump legal challenges have already been laughed out of court, and Attorney General William Barr has now authorized United States attorneys to investigate allegations of voting irregularities — a bonfire of taxpayer money that will no doubt be cheered on by “conservatives.”
Of course, this is all to allay the fractured ego of a petulant president who thinks it is more important to drag America through a phony legal process than hand power over with dignity. It was his plan all along, and now it’s just a cash grab to fund Trump Inc. when the Secret Service eventually drags him out of the White House.
For Trump’s supporters, this money would be better spent on an old “Girls Gone Wild” videotape — they can probably be found at the sex shop next to Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia.
Christian Schneider, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, is a senior reporter at The College Fix, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and author of “1916: The Blog.”
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