As of this writing, neither President Donald Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden has been called in the presidential race. Not that it mattered; regardless of whether the hopelessly corrupt political press deems either candidate to have won the required 270 Electoral College votes, the electoral battle is only just beginning. Gird up your loins.
Throughout the summer, as it became clear that Democratic activists across the country were pushing for a midstream election law change to allow for mass mail-in voting the likes of which our republic had never seen, conservatives and other advocates for a sheltered and lasting voting rights system pointed to eliminating any number of obvious problems. How could we ensure that only properly registered, lively voters in a particular precinct receive ballots? What about photo ID, signature confirmation and postmark? All this, of course, in a country with a long history of electoral fraud; younger readers would relate well to Google’s “Box 13 scandal” surrounding Lyndon Johnson’s 1948 Senate race.
In early September, Hillsdale College lecturer and former Trump administration official Michael Anton published an eye-opening essay on the Claremont Institute’s American Mind website titled “The Coming Coup?” Anton cited a leaked report of a war game simulation involving Democrats and Republicans who never supported Trump for the 2020 presidential election. In this simulation, Biden’s role was assigned to John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Podesta stood his ground and kept the pressure on the states, which Trump clearly advocated for sending Democratic electors to the Electoral College, and contented himself with letting the military handle the rest of the fun stuff.
A coup d’état, or by another name. The question facing Republicans now is: If Democrats are going to stage a peaceful coup, would they have done anything differently since Tuesday night?
By early evening it was immediately clear that the polls were once again heavily biased. Trump won Florida, the quintessential swing state, o wider margin than in 2016. He won decisively in Ohio, the nation’s second paradigmatic swing state and the historic decider of a hotly contested election. We were told he narrowly lost Wisconsin and Michigan, even though supposedly reliable pollsters assured us a week before the election that Biden would win every state by double digits. Many outlets have previously called Arizona about Biden – an indefensible call that will be a killer finish.
Shortly after it became clear that Trump had plans for Florida and Ohio, the situation became problematic. Vote counting strangely halted in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and three “blue wall” states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Even more strangely, on subsequent nights, gigantic tranches of votes were mysteriously “found” in states where Trump was leading on election night. As Harvard Law School professor and Twitter wit Adrian Vermeule put it: “Kids, I’m not sure if you knew this, but the missing ballots have magical properties that make them only visible between midnight and 6 a.m..” .
Incredibly, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website tells us that one tranche of over 23,000 votes mysteriously “found” in Philadelphia was “all for Biden.” It doesn’t take a PhD in advanced statistics to understand that this is simply impossible. Moreover, this was around the same time that Democrats in Philadelphia were actively seeking legal remedies to prevent Republican poll watchers from properly observing vote tabulations. There are many other examples: In Milwaukee, for example, seven precincts reported more votes in the presidential election than registered voters.
It’s possible that all of this will ultimately turn out to be completely kosher. Republicans, however, can be forgiven for their deep skepticism. The message from the Democrat-media convoluted appears to be: “Trust us, while the one-party Democrat political machine cities will seek legal remedies to prevent Republicans from properly following vote tabulations while we report votes ‘found’ in the early morning hours.” . it all went to Biden.” This is not news that should be well received.
This cycle, Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail and Republicans were much more likely to vote in person on Election Day, so perhaps it makes sense to some extent that the initial voting lead for Trump in some jurisdictions could be erased by later “found” ballots for Biden . But now is the time for the Republican Party and conservative lawmakers across the country to unite like never before to ensure that every vote cast and tabulated is lawful. It is certainly also time for the Department of Justice to become more involved than before. There are no other real options – certainly not for an election of this magnitude.
So far, the Supreme Court’s inaction in electoral law cases this cycle has not inspired confidence. The political calculus of overly political Chief Justice John Roberts appears to have been that a Biden landslide would justify the court’s decisions not to stop questionable last-minute changes to election laws in states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina. This Biden slide apparently didn’t happen. It’s time for conservative lawmakers and the entire Republican Party to mobilize and do their part to secure the integrity of election results in a myriad of closely contested states. For those who want to reunite our ever-conflicted country, it seems natural to support any measure to ensure that only valid ballots are actually counted. Only then can a grieving nation begin to heal.
