PHILADELPHIA — President Trump’s refusal to accept the presidential election results is being reinforced in pockets of denial nationwide, but the anger continues to fall short of a coherent resistance movement that would threaten to overturn the vote.
In states where Trump won and here in one where he lost a close race, elected Republicans and GOP voters called for the continuation of efforts to challenge the results, which in Pennsylvania give President-elect Joe Biden a roughly 45,000-vote margin of victory.
Small clusters of Trump supporters gathered on several Philadelphia street corners Sunday to condemn a vote-counting process in which the president lost an early lead to Biden over several agonizing days. No evidence of improper counting procedures or any type of voter fraud has been presented. Continue reading.
A new report confirms this election was fair, free and secure. Trump and his Republican sycophants have no evidence for their claims — even other Republicans admit they are inventing conspiracy theories. Trump can’t hide from the truth: Joe Biden won the election and will be the 46th President of the United States.
New York Times: The Times Call Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud
By Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein and Jim Rutenberg
election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election.
Over the last several days, the president, members of his administration, congressional Republicans and right wing allies have put forth the false claim that the election was stolen from President Trump and have refused to accept results that showed Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the winner.
But top election officials across the country said in interview and statements that the process had been a remarkable success despite record turnout and the complications of a dangers pandemic.
“Theree’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections,” said Frank LaRose, a Republican who serves as Ohio’s Secretary of State. “The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant. For some reason, elections breed that type of mytology.”
Steve Simon, a Democrat who is Minnesota’s Secretary of State said: “I don’t know of a single case where someone argued that a vote counted when it shouldn’t have to didn’t count when it should. There was no fraud.”
“Kansas did not experience any widespread, systemic issues with voter fraud, intimidation, irregularities or voting problems,” a spokeswoman for Scott Schwab, the Republican Secretary of State in Kansas, said in an email Tuesday. “We are very pleased with how the election has gone up to this point.”
The New York Times contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state on Monday and Tuesday to ask whether they suspected or had evidence of illegal voting. Officials in 45 states responded directly to The Times. For 4 of the remaining states, The Times spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state; none reported any major voting issues.
[…]
One of the Secretaries of State who did not respond to request for comment about the election in his state was Corey Stapleton of Montana, an outgoing Republican. But Mr. Stapleton did post a message implicitly addressing the president’s ongoing fraud claims. “I have supported you, Mr. President,” he wrote. “But that time is now over! Tim you hat, bite your lip, and congratulate @JoeBiden.”
HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA — In the capital of Pennsylvania — the state that ultimately tipped the election in favor of President-elect Joe Biden — supporters of President Donald Trump gathered to protest the election result this weekend.
The past four years in America have been an education in how grievances and misinformation on social media don’t just stay online — they spill out onto the streets, can manifest as violence, and, as seen in Harrisburg, this weekend, be used in attempts to undermine the bedrock of American democracy: free and fair elections.
Sen. Roy Blunt acknowledged that the election’s results for Joe Biden are unlikely to change but said Trump’s lawyers should make their case.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Sunday said he doesn’t expect any election-altering changes in the days ahead but the country should still refrain from celebrating a presidential win by former Vice President Joe Biden until President Donald Trump submits his alleged proof that he won.
“It’s time for the president’s lawyers to present the facts and then it’s time for those facts to speak for themselves,” he told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
Trump, who remains 56 electoral votes short of the 270 needed to win the presidency based on media projections, has repeatedly claimed he won the election and has accused the Democratic Party of “wrongdoing.” He has insisted that there are “valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor.” Continue reading.
A Trump administration appointee is refusing to sign a letter allowing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to formally begin its work this week, in another sign the incumbent president has not acknowledged Biden’s victory and could disrupt the transfer of power.
The administrator of the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency in charge of federal buildings, has a little-known role when a new president is elected: to sign paperwork officially turning over millions of dollars, as well as give access to government officials, office space in agencies and equipment authorized for the taxpayer-funded transition teams of the winner.
It amounts to a formal declaration by the federal government, outside of the media, of the winner of the presidential race. Continue reading.
PHOENIX — Activists and supporters of President Trump insisted Saturday that the presidential election was not finished, displaying defiance after Joe Biden secured victory in the closely fought race.
From here in the Arizona desert to Philadelphia, Trump backers echoed the president’s attacks on the integrity of the election, which continued Saturday with his statement that “this election is far from over.” They made baseless allegations of voter fraud and pledged to keep fighting in court while claiming Biden did not legitimately win.
“We know the election is being stolen,” said Michael Breitenbach, a 47-year-old construction manager in Philadelphia who was holding a Trump flag Saturday morning not long after news outlets called the race. “When the count is fair and legal, Donald Trump will have won by a landslide, and you can bank on that.” Continue reading.
When CBS, NBC and ABC cut away from President Donald Trump’s news conference at the White House on the evening of Nov. 5, they took pains to explain why they were shutting off the nation’s commander-in-chief.
It was a moment that for me, as a journalism historian, carried echoes of the 1954 takedown of another flamboyant populist demagogue, Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Making false accusations
The key reason, the networks explained, was that Trump had made false claims about the integrity of Tuesday’s presidential election. As ballot counting signaled the increasing likelihood that he would lose to former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election from him. Continue reading.
A legal complaint filed by the Nevada Republican Party alleges that members of the military committed voter fraud by voting legally.
The criminal referral, sent by the party to the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday, baselessly alleges “at least 3,062 instances of voter fraud” in Tuesday’s elections in the state. “Thousands of individuals have been identified who appear to have violated the law by casting ballots after they moved from NV,” the party claimed.
But according to the Washington Post, Nevada law allows many people temporarily residing out of state to continue to participate in elections. This includes Nevadans serving in the military and their spouses as well as those attending colleges outside of Nevada. Continue reading.
As multiple states continue counting mail-in ballots, President Donald Trump, his campaign team, and his supporters are beginning to scramble in an effort to discredit the results and integrity of the election. Now, a substantial number of claims and conspiracy theories are running rampant all over social media.
According to Buzzfeed News, the claims are being broken down into three different categories: unverified, misleading, and flatly false. In fact, over the last 48 hours, the president has even been flagged for spreading information that falls into one of these three categories.
Check out the list of election rumors circulating on social media: Continue reading.
We should begin any consideration of President Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud with the context that Trump has been making similar claims without evidence for five years and, for months, has telegraphed his intention to claim that any loss in this year’s contest was a function of dishonesty. He is the president who has repeatedly cried wolf — but who also said for months that he was going to cry wolf. And now he is saying there’s a wolf.
The rationale for doing this is obvious. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump lost the election, by about the same electoral-vote margin he won four years ago but with a much greater loss of popular vote. If his goal is to stay in office at any cost, he has got to do something to undercut the results. So this is his play, as he said it would be.
His allies and enablers, predictably, are lining up to support him. Instead of demonstrating fraud, though, they’re simply alleging it and using those allegations as their case. Former ambassador Ric Grenell, for example, was asked by MSNBC on Thursday for evidence of his claims about fraud in Nevada, and he insisted that the reporters ask Nevada officials, as though simply because he said something the media was supposed to consider it believable by default. That’s not how such things work. If I say that you are a space alien, it’s not sufficient for me to demand that any skeptics bother you to answer questions about it. Also, Michigan has been called for Biden. Continue reading.
