In 2016 Hillary Clinton and the Democrat party claimed that Mr. Trump won the Presidential election by subterfuge and that he was an illegitimate President. The basis of their complaint was that Russian agents had interfered in the election, such as by placing fake social media posts, and that Mr. Trump had made a secret arrangement with Russian President Putin for this purpose in exchange for benefits to Russia in American foreign policy. This charge, as we all know, was investigated intensely for 2 1/2 years and no evidence was found to support it.
In 2020 we have the reverse situation in which the President and his party are claiming that massive election fraud produced the result. To be sure considerable circumstantial evidence raises that suspicion. In light of the large success of the Republicans in the Congressional and State legislatures, the significant loss of the man at the top of the ticket makes one wonder. His substantial success in bellwether states such as Ohio and Florida, as well as the large majority of usually bellwether counties around the country, raises suspicion as to why he did so overwhelmingly poorly in key large Democrat urban areas in selected swing States, especially considering the increase in support for him from the usually stalwart Democrat base of minority voters in other parts of the country. The massive middle of the night infusions of overwhelmingly large Biden votes which overcame Mr. Trump's early significant lead is strange. One would wonder why the dramatic increase in mail in balloting, purportedly to counteract the risk of COVID, would so enormously attract Democrats over Republicans. Also, there is the matter of the voting machines which have been shown to possess multiple vulnerabilities that could be used for fraudulent actions.
But what about real evidence. The Republican challenge have taken two lines, first the occurrence of numerous procedural irregularities that contradicted election law, and secondly actual discoveries of fraudulent behavior in the votes themselves.
The first line covers areas such as changes in voting procedures by State election officials that contradict State laws and constitutional provisions, as well as numerous instances in which vote tabulation was carried out apart from the legally obligatory party observers. In the second case Republicans claim to have uncovered large numbers of illegal votes such as from deceased persons, out of state residents, underage and non-citizen voters and double voting. There are numerous testimonies from individuals who claim that votes in their names were cast falsely.
Numerous court challenges along these lines have been rejected, but largely on the basis of technical problems such as excessive delay or lack of standing. The courts generally seem to be reluctant to take the momentous step of actually judging the cases on the merit of their claims. To be sure, the Republicans seem to have been caught flat-footed and are late to the game in challenging violations in election law, particularly in the adoption of massive mail in balloting procedures which were an open invitation to cheating. It would have been much better to have strict identification, monitoring and chain of custody regulations in place before the election with invalidation of votes being the penalty for flaunting them.
But what of the Republican's claims of thousands of illegal votes? It seems it would be easy enough to evaluate their evidence. If it is not convincing that will be that, but if it is how can we accept the results of such an election? Mr. Trump's allies are for now continuing to fight, but It seems more and more likely that the Democrats will prevail in convincing the country that what's done is done without any further investigation such as was carried out after the 2016 election. Our country has historically been freewheeling characterized by strong local control, but is it possible that in America in 2020 that we cannot carry out a fair general election that can be accepted by all sides?
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