While state election centers are broadcast on cable news and have drawn partisan supporters to the sites as thirst for electoral updates intensifies, election administrators have continued to diligently tabulate the votes.
PHILADELPHIA — They typically operate behind the scenes and far from the spotlight. But as the final count in the 2020 presidential election drags on and President Trump assaults the integrity of the results, otherwise obscure secretaries of state, election commissioners and clerks have found their every utterance meriting breaking news interruptions and all-caps cable chyrons.
With the occupant of the White House hinging on the results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, the Trump campaign has sought to ratchet up pressure on election officials, threatening legislation and trying to shape public opinion with carnival-like events. Mr. Trump himself baselessly claimed widespread fraud and that people were “trying to steal the election,” at a news conference Thursday evening. And the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., even tried to make support of the effort a litmus test of the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
“Everyone should be watching who is actually fighting this flagrant nonsense and who is sitting on the sidelines,” he wrote Thursday afternoon on Twitter. An hour later, he fumed, “The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing.” Continue reading.