There is so much information coming in, I could be mistaken about anything at this moment, but that is the situation that we live in, so let’s go on anyway. The talk is of fraud, and it is probable someone is being fraudulent.
If there was widespread evidence of fraud coming from independent sources, then it would be vital to challenge the election result. However, the challenge is largely coming from people who don’t seem to have much regard for the truth, who have spent months beforehand preparing to challenge the results, who tried to make pre-poll voting as awkward as possible by limiting booths, who tried to stop mail voting, who tried to stop the post office delivering mailed votes, who tried to stop the counting of mail votes, who have argued that no votes should be counted after election day, who regularly try to disenfranchise large sections of the population, who have essentially threatened not to leave power, who alleged the results of the last election that they won were fake because they did not win the popular vote, who threatened that they would only accept the results of the previous election if they won, who ‘joked’ about staying for at least three terms, who seem unconcerned about foreign states intervening in the election on their behalf, who actually asked supporters to vote twice, who never seem to worry about how easy it is to hack voting machines, and so on. Coming from those people, it simply seems a way of potentially avoiding loss.
For some strange reason despite the claims of fraud, the Republicans have managed to keep the Senate, and it looks like they managed to take seats in the lower house, but they managed to lose several ‘Republican States’ in the Presidential vote. This seems to be being forgotten – so its an odd set of election frauds.
It is also odd, because, previously, Republicans fought hard and successfully to prevent a recount in Florida in the Bush/Gore Election, so their current concern with voter fraud, and preventing a miscount, is a bit weird at best. Even more weirdly, they have not yet lost the Presidential election, and they seem to be asking for counting to stop because the results are not going their way – not to examine fraud. This could change of course.
That a party wants to win, or thinks they should win, is not evidence they have won. That they think the votes should not change when absentee votes are counted is not evidence either.
True, votes need to be held up to scrutiny. People from both parties need to watch the counting (which as far as I can see is happening, despite allegations otherwise), although crowds of unofficial observers are not being let in, for what seem like obvious reasons to me, unless you want vote theft to occur. So its fair enough that people outside observe through binoculars if that makes them happy, although a video link would be easy to maintain.
All votes need to be counted, unless there is evidence which suggests particular votes are fake – such as two postal, or booth, votes supposedly from the same person. With postal votes, it is easy to set the votes aside for investigation before counting. We need to find out how many people, if any, appear to have voted twice. We could even ask which vote the person wants to be accepted, if the person wants to comment and we cannot prove they voted twice. Checking votes for legitimacy, should be easy to do – otherwise the system needs changing.
Recounts need to be routine, not special, especially if the vote is close. Anyone can make mistakes. However, votes should not be discarded because they are votes for the ‘wrong person,’ and parties should not be able to stop a recount when the result is close.
Democracy depends upon conventions. If the conventions become routinely broken, then democracy becomes broken. President Trump has destroyed conventions repeatedly. His party even refused to listen to the evidence in his impeachment case. He lies repeatedly. He lies to such an extent, that any sensible person would think that any assertion Trump makes which appears to benefit himself, is likely to be false, unless proven otherwise.
Democracy, of any type, depends on the assumption that your opponents are honourable. Unfortunately after this election it seems impossible to assume our opponents are honourable. It does not matter what side you are on, Donald Trump has now disrupted that sense of honour for everyone , and this will almost certainly not be fixed easily. Whoever wins, significant numbers of the other side will feel they have been cheated, and will likely feel any future cheating and dishonesty by themselves is justified by this.
Democracy is fragile. US democracy may never recover from what has happened, because Trump has set a precedent for ignoring conventions and for discovering that abuse of power can be hidden by assertion, party support, repeated fiction and what looks like a dedicated networked propaganda machine of youtube videos, internet rumour, and minor stations. Every unscrupulous politician in the world will have learnt how easy this is.
Trump will probably not stop the destabilisation. There is a story told by Richard Branson, from before the 2016 election, which possibly illustrates Trump’s behaviour. You don’t have to trust Branson, for it to be relevant, but what did he gain from this?
Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.
He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life…..
I was baffled why he had invited me to lunch solely to tell me this. For a moment, I even wondered if he was going to ask me for financial help. If he had, I would have become the sixth person on his list!
Branson. Meeting Donald Trump. Richard Branson Blog. 21 October 2016
One story is not evidence of anything, but it fits with what we know of Trump’s continual vindictiveness against those he perceives as opponents. We also know he blames others for his failures.
According to USA Today back in 2016:
the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades. They range from skirmishes with casino patrons to million-dollar real estate suits to personal defamation lawsuits….
since he announced his candidacy a year ago, at least 70 new cases have been filed, about evenly divided between lawsuits filed by him and his companies and those filed against them. And the records review found at least 50 civil lawsuits remain open even as he moves toward claiming the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in seven weeks….
The legal actions provide clues to the leadership style the billionaire businessman would bring to bear as commander in chief. He sometimes responds to even small disputes with overwhelming legal force. He doesn’t hesitate to deploy his wealth and legal firepower against adversaries with limited resources, such as homeowners. He sometimes refuses to pay real estate brokers, lawyers and other vendors.
As he campaigns, Trump often touts his skills as a negotiator. The analysis shows that lawsuits are one of his primary negotiating tools. He turns to litigation to distance himself from failing projects that relied on the Trump brand to secure investments.
Penzenstadler & Page. Exclusive: Trump’s 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential nominee. USA Today 1 June 2016 – update 23 October 2017. [emphasis added]
This is unsual, even for an ‘important’ business person.
Trump does appears vengeful, and probably will continue his denial of loss and use the courts in an attempt to prevent loss. It seems improbable he will concede defeat and he will cling on in the hope that he can make any Biden victory be the subject of suspicion and contempt – wrecking things for others might be pleasurable for him. He has until mid January to wreck as much as he can – it is only convention that stops sitting presidents from doing this after they are voted out.
Whether he needs to be successful or not in persuading his selected judges to decide for him, we are all probably set for an even greater run of authoritarian and non democratic power, whatever the declared result of the election.
We should also remember, that should he get in, Biden will have to work with a hostile Senate, particularly if they stick with the view he is a fraud, that attacking him as a fraud is popular electorally, or with the view they had of Obama that they need to destroy him. Then it will be awkward to get anything done.
Likewise, there is probably no solution to the Covid problem, now the disease is so established, and now the anti-vax movement will feel free to protest against Trump’s vaccination solution given that Trump is not proposing it.
Tags: Disinformation, politics
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
Leave a comment