A Shitshow of Biblical Proportions

On November 12, 2020 the Department of Homeland Security issued this Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council & the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees of the Department of Homeland Security .

The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.

When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.

While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.

This statement issued by Trump's own Department of Homeland Security, the cabinet-level organization that SHOULD know better than any other organization IN THE WORLD, says that the 2020 Presidential Election was "the most secure in American history". Yet, having the most secure election in America's history did not stop a large part of Trump's political base from supporting a violent insurrection against the United States on January 6, 2021, when the Congress of the United States met to certify the electoral votes. They were convinced the election was stolen despite the Department of Homeland Security's statement that "All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Nor did the fact that EVERY contested state's election committee and legislatures certified the votes as being accurate prevent this group of people from being convinced the election was stolen. Even though these state legislatures were all dominated by Republicans (the party that lost the presidency).

The same can be said of the statement from Bill Barr, Trump's highly partisan pro-Trump Attorney General who after having issued a directive to U.S. Attorneys to pursue any "substantial allegations" of voting irregularities came back and said a month later "to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election".

The fact that in over 60 Trump-inspired lawsuits, over 80 judges (up to and including those on the Supreme Court; many appointed by Trump himself) have been virtually unanimous in their finding that there isn't even enough evidence of voter fraud worth considering, stop these people from being convinced otherwise.

And finally the fact that no election fraud scenario presented by Trump or Trump's lawyer explain how would have been possible for the election fraud cause the defeat of Trump but still allow the Republicans to GAIN seats in the House of Representatives.

None of this played a part in the thinking of these insurrectionists. In fact they were convinced of the exact opposite ... that instead of the evidence clearly showing that there was no significant election fraud; they thought the evidence was overwhelmingly the other way -- election fraud was a virtual certainty. Why did they think this obvious lie to be true?

They thought this because (1) their guy ... Trump ... loudly proclaimed without evidence before the election that the only way he could lose was by voter fraud. (2) Trump loudly proclaimed without evidence during the election that vote counts were fraudulent. (3) Trump loudly proclaimed without evidence after the election there was fraud on a massive scale; (4) some highly partisan news sources kept promoting it; and (5) other prominent Republican leaders did not have the courage to condemn his allegations as baseless.

So despite the 2020 election being "the most secure in American history", it was shown that any person with a large enough base of support, platforms to get his propaganda out to the public, and cowardly acceptance by other leaders in his political party can incite a violent insurrection simply because they do not like the results of a fair election. It is evidently that easy to do. If we couldn't make "the most secure election in American history" an election that people had confidence in then making adjustments to our existing election system to make it even more secure is not likely to help the problem.

Furthermore, it can be argued that since there was NO evidence of ANY significant election fraud and you can't get less than zero, there is nothing that can actually be done to actually make the election more secure. Republicans in many state legislatures are trying to invoke measures that they claim will increase election security but those measures are actually poorly disguised attempts at voter suppression. And voter suppression is just another form of election fraud. So these steps will create the very problem proponents claim they are trying to prevent.

I listened to some of Trump's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last Sunday. It is clear that events have not changed him. He is not the least bit remorseful about inciting the insurrection. He believes it was the right thing to do. He continues to promote the conspiracy theory that he was robbed and actually won the election (and just to repeat so any of his supporters who may still be reading this ... HE LOST, IT WASN'T EVEN THAT CLOSE OF AN ELECTION, THE ONLY ATTEMPTED "STEAL" OF THE ELECTION WAS BY TRUMP HIMSELF). Trump also showed he was the head of what remains of the Republican party and would like to run again. At this point he should be considered the frontrunner. If he does run again in 2024, I suspect he will lose. What will he do in that case? He will do what he has done when he has lost any election (be it the 2016 Iowa and Wisconsin primaries; the 2016 popular vote; Emmy for his TV show The Apprentice; or the Nobel Peace Prize) ... he will claim the vote was rigged!! And we will be right back in the same situation we had just a little while ago.

If our present election system can't be fixed, then the solution is to replace it. We need to replace it with one that resistant to the forces that have turned our present system into a shitshow of biblical proportions, but maintains the ideals of a liberal democracy. In my next post I will present what I think is the best candidate to be such an alternative system ... a national primary with rank-choice voting.