Belief in Election Fraud Grows

Last Tuesday  morning, two national newspapers published two related articles that should confound the mind of any rational person.  There is no way that both of these articles could be true. No way!

The first article, published by USA today, was written by Ken Block, the elections expert Donald Trump hired to deliver evidence of fraud in the 2020 election that could be defended in a court of law.

Block’s company, Simpatico Software Systems,  was thorough.  And it did uncover evidence of voter fraud. Some privileged people with two homes voted twice, and a few dead people voted.

But those were few and far between, and Block clearly said so. His report said the company “found no evidence of voter fraud sufficient to change the outcome of any election.”

And, he added, “The small amount of voter fraud I found was bipartisan, with about as many Republicans casting duplicate votes as Democrats.”

And, further, “More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false.”

Block shared all this with Trump, of course, and Trump accepted it.  Trump even admitted to his top aides that he knew he lost.

(End of that story, Then Trump started saying publicly that he had won the election.  He kept it up even after he lost more than 60 court cases without a single win, and despite not offering one iota of evidence for his claim, even after Block submitted his report as sworn testimony to government panels investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, even after disparate international poll watchers declared the election the cleanest U.S. election in memory.  And he is still claiming it, still without offering any evidence whatsoever.)

Which brings us to the second article, which The Washington Post published an hour or so after the USA Today article.  It was the report of a Washington Post-University of Maryland Poll, and it found, among much else, that:

• More than one third of Americans (36 percent) believe Trump’s claim that the election was rigged against him; and
• More Americans today believe that Trump won the election than they did two years ago.

And that’s just plain nuts.  It cannot be.  It seems impossible, faced with all that evidence, that you could find a dozen people who would believe that the election was fixed against Trump.  But yet, there it is.  He’s leading by a landslide and his lead is growing.

It gets worse:

• Fewer Republicans now say Trump bears responsibility for the Jan. 6 Capitol attack than they did in 2021.
• Seven in 10 Republicans think Trump is innocent of charges that he conspired to  defraud the United States.
• Most Republicans reject the view that the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol was “an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten.”
• One in three Republicans think the FBI conspired to cause the Capitol riot.
• Etc.

Now, the next few paragraphs I’ve written before and you’ve read before.  But occasionally it is good to slow down for a moment and take the time to just look at the person.

As president Trump was legitimately impeached twice, and anyone who watched Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation knows he was guilty. (Sidelight:  Did you notice that during those hearings the only people who testified against him were those closest to him, and the only ones who refused to testify were those who said he was innocent?)

Here is a person who faces 91 felony charges in four courtrooms, and more.  He is credibly charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, violating the Espionage Act, falsifying business records, conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiring against rights. 

And those are just the federal charges. In Georgia he’s credibly charged with 13 counts that include racketeering, forgery, perjury, filing false documents, making false statements, and more. In New York he’s charged with financial fraud.  All felonies.

Also in New York, a federal judge convicted Trump of defaming the character of a woman he had been convicted of sexually assaulting, and he told the jury it would only need to decide how much money he should pay her.  He kept up insulting her, though,  so she sued him again.

Here is a person who studied Hitler intently and follows him religiously – e.g., Hitler’s command to lie, lie big, and never quit lying even though your lie is proven to be a lie beyond any doubt, because if you do enough people will follow you anyway to make the effort worthwhile.  Trump can be connected to Hitler in many ways (see The Hitler-Trump Connections, 10/15/23).

He has promised that, if elected, he will become a dictator on the first day.  He will fire thousands of civil servants and replace them with people who will do whatever he tells them to do.  He will arrest millions of undocumented aliens, including the so-called Dreamers, and hold them in mammoth pens of some sort until they can be deported, as soon as possible  He will resume his ban on Muslims entering the country.  He will make nice with Russia and North Korea.  He will remove us from NATO. He has said he wants to start executing drug dealers after sham trials.  He once demanded his military leaders act like he was Adolf Hitler and they were German generals during World War II.  One of his attorneys testified in court recently that Trump did not have to follow the Constitution because the Constitution only said he had to “preserve, protect and defend” it, not follow it.  And just last Thursday congressional Democrats revealed Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8 billion in foreign payments during his presidency – and certainly much, much more — which would be a violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause.  And on and on and on…

Twenty-seven  psychiatrists and mental health experts wrote a book (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump) that clearly demonstrated why he is criminally mentally ill.  He is openly a crotch-grabbing misogynist, a racist, a demagogue, the very definition of what our Founding Fathers feared the most.  And on and on it goes.  Story without end.

And that’s the person Republicans across the land are saying, in overwhelming and growing numbers, that they want to become the next president of the United States.

Amazing.  Simply amazing.

But, hey, if that’s the best you got, Republicans, bring it.  Trump is my hoped-for Republican nominee for a couple of reasons.  First, it will focus a much-needed harsh focus on the choice before us, either a democratic republic or a dictatorship, and any other candidate would blur that focus immeasurably.  And second, he would be easy to beat.

I cannot believe that enough Americans exist who would purposefully put all their rights and freedoms into the hands of any one person — especially that one — not once they understand the impossible-to-overstate the importance of November’s election.

And there is where each one of us comes in.  Each one of us must do our part in whatever world we live in. Robert Reich, the American professor, author, lawyer and political commentator,  recently offered these seven suggestions.  I paraphrase:

1. Don’t waste your time with Trump loyalists.  They are blind and deaf.  Focus instead on the sleeping and the undecided, those who can be reached.
2. Volunteer.  Knock on doors.  Make telephone calls. Write letters and cards.  Offer your time.
3. Know what’s going on so you can counter lies with truth.
4. Stand up to bigotry and other forms of hate every time you see it.
5. Be compassionate.
6. Demonstrating in marches and on street corners is good, but don’t let it become your only means of acting.
7. Don’t be distracted.   Keep your eye on the prize.

 

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