Courtesy of Bastrop Advertiser
Dec. 9, 2021
By Bill McCann
I’ve always thought voting was a key part of being a good citizen. I’ll bet most folks feel the same way. I may have missed a local election or two over the past six decades, but never a presidential vote.
That’s why I’ve been particularly sad and angry over the continued undermining of our election system by former president Donald Trump and his Republican allies who allege that rampant voter fraud cost Trump the 2020 election. I fear the unfounded allegations have done more damage to the credibility of our election system than Russian interference could ever do.
It’s been more than 13 months since Joe Biden was elected president. The election wasn’t that close. But we keep hearing about election conspiracy theories that professional fact-checkers and voting rights experts have debunked and that Democrat and Republican judges have thrown out of court. Trump’s top cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history. Then Trump fired him. And the fraud allegations persist.
It’s time for Trump and his backers, including those in Congress, to give us the detailed evidence of widespread election fraud, if indeed they have it. Here’s how they can do it. As the loudest complainer, Trump should lead the charge. He should round up his biggest defenders, including those lawyers who filed about 60 frivolous election-fraud lawsuits that got tossed out of court. They should offer their evidence in a televised hearing before the U.S. House committee currently investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Alleged election fraud was the crux of the insurrection, so how could the committee say no?
But there should be rules to follow, including providing only evidence. No rumors. No speculation. No false stories concocted by far-right media making incorrect calculations. No cockamamie conspiracies about Chinese tinkering with voting machines. Also, testify under oath. I would pay to see Trump testify under oath. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine that happening. Trump and his allies have had more than enough time to deliver the hard evidence to prosecutors and the courts. They don’t have it.
If voter fraud was rampant, where are the tens of thousands of election-fraud prosecutions, especially in the 26 states with Republican attorneys general? Also, how did widespread voter fraud hit Trump but somehow miss all those state and local Republicans who won election nationally? It seems logical that fraudsters also would have targeted numerous congressional Republicans while they were at it. It didn’t happen.
This past summer, reporters at Bloomberg Government did a 50-state canvas of state officials and identified only about 200 election-fraud prosecutions since November 2018. Nearly all the cases were “insignificant infractions” in a timeframe when hundreds of millions of people voted nationally, Bloomberg reported.
In Wisconsin, a swing state that Biden won, the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s annual report cited only 13 allegations of possible voter fraud referred to district attorneys related to the 2020 election, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. Wisconsin residents cast nearly 3.3 million votes in that election.
And in Arizona this year the state’s Republican Senate commissioned an election “audit” of Maricopa County, where voters gave Biden the win in Arizona. Despite being led by Trump backers, the review affirmed that Biden beat Trump in Arizona – and, in fact, increased his winning margin by 360 votes, according to media reports.
The only possible fraud I’ve seen so far from the 2020 election is that perpetrated on the American people by Trump and his allies by claiming that Trump won. Show us skeptics that we are wrong, Trumpsters. Show us tangible evidence of rampant voter fraud or else stop the “big lie”.
McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at [email protected].
