By: Staci Campbell
(Please note that the final draft of this blog was submitted before the election results were announced on Saturday.)
The year 2020 has been no stranger to protests. Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people who have lost their lives at the hands of police brutality, Black Lives Matter has been at the forefront of racial and social justice protests across the nation.
In light of the on-going (upon writing this) presidential election, a new wave of protests has surfaced throughout the country. Chants have drifted from “Black Lives Matter” to those of “All Votes Matter,” “Legal Votes Matter,” “Stop the Steal,” and “Count Every Vote.”[1] However, confusion reigns as some of the protesters want every vote counted while others want the counting to stop. So? Why the split? It is evident that the protesters who want the counting of the votes to end are mostly Republican and the Democrats make up the groups of “counter protestors” advocating for the continued count of uncounted ballots.[2] As stated by GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri: “You can’t stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state. That might be how you’d like to see the system work but that’s not how the system works.”[3]
The 2020 presidential election is historic in many ways. Joseph Biden has received more popular votes than any other president—breaking the record previously set by Barack Obama.[4] Moreover, this election saw one of the highest voter turn outs of the century[5], and, most notably, the election took place in the midst of a global pandemic—leading to more mail-in ballots being utilized than ever before.[6][cite]
States where President Trump was initially leading on the day of the election began to shift to a lead in favor of Biden the day after Election Day.[7] This is due mainly in part that most mail-in ballots were by Democratic voters. Republican voters were more likely to walk into polling sites than Democratic voters were.[8] There are many different lines of reasoning behind this, one of the most common being that, since April, President Trump has urged Republicans to avoid mail-in ballots and has posted several tweets implying that mail-in ballots lead to voter fraud and a “rigged” election.
It is no surprise that the President began making claims of voter fraud two days after Election Day. President Trump has filed lawsuits in three separate states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia—all of which are considered “battleground states.”[9] The Trump Campaign is calling for a halt of ballot counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania “until it is given ‘meaningful’ access in numerous locations and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed.”[10] In an interview with CNN, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania stated “[t]here is transparency in this process. The counting has been going on. There are observers observing this counting, and the counting will continue.”[11] There has been some victory in the Trump Campaign’s legal jaunts, in Philadelphia, a state appellate court ruled in favor of President Trump ordering that the distance at which poll workers were observed to be reduced from 20 feet to six feet[12] (at least they are continuing to maintain the proper social distance).
Though President Trump’s claims come as no surprise, it is extremely disheartening that the President of the United States of America would equate poll workers doing their job and counting every vote casted as an illegal, deceitful “rigging” of an election. Is this not what this free nation strives for? All voices being heard, all lives mattering, all votes counting?
While “Top Republicans” are supporting President Trump’s allegation of voter fraud, there are many Republican members of the House and Senate publicly tweeting their disagreement with the president’s comments, deeming them “dangerous.”[13] GOP Rep. Will Hurd of Texas tweeted “[a] sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon.”[14] Michigan Republican Rep. Paul Mitchell tweeted, “If anyone has proof of wrongdoing, it should be presented and resolved. Anything less harms the integrity of our elections and is dangerous for our democracy.”[15]
Voter fraud is, and remains, an extremely rare occurrence in the United States and there is no evidence arising supporting the President’s claims of voter fraud being rampant in this election. The nation remains in a state of collective anxiety as the results of the election nears.
[1] Simon Romero, Shaila Dewan, and Giulia Mcdonnel Nieto del Rio, In a Year of Protest Cries, Now It’s ‘Count Every Vote!’ and ‘Stop the Steal!’, NY Times (Nov. 5, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/us/election-protests-vote-count.html.
[2] Id.
[3] Ted Barrett, Manu Raju, and Clare Foran, Top Republicans defend Trump on baseless voter fraudclaims as concerns grow in the ranks, CNN (Nov. 6, 2020, 1:15 PM) https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/politics/election-2020-congressional-republicans-trump-election-fraud/index.html.
[4] Sophie Lewis, Joe Biden breaks Obama’s record for most votes ever cast for a U.S. presidential candidate, CBS News (Nov. 5, 2020, 11:33 AM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-popular-vote-record-barack-obama-us-presidential-election-donald-trump/.
[5] Phil Wahba, This nail-biter election generated the highest U.S. voter turnout rate in 120 years, Fortune (Nov. 4, 2020, 8:20 AM), https://fortune.com/2020/11/04/record-voter-turnout-2020-election-youth-vote-vote-by-mail/.
[6] Drew Desilver, Mail-in voting became much more common in 2020 primaries as COVID-19 spread, Pew Research Center (Oct. 13, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/13/mail-in-voting-became-much-more-common-in-2020-primaries-as-covid-19-spread/.
[7] Aaron Blake, Trump blames Democrats for late-counted mail ballots. He Should blame the GOP., Washington Post (Nov. 5, 2020, 4:17 PM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/05/trump-blames-democrats-late-counted-mail-ballots-he-should-blame-gop/.
[8] Holly Otterbein, Democrats return nearly three times as many mail-in ballots as Republicans in Pennsylvania, Politico (Nov. 3, 2020, 1:31 PM), https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/03/democrats-more-mail-in-ballots-pennsylvania-433951.
[9] Mark Sherman, Trump sues in 3 states, laying ground for contesting outcome, AP News (Nov. 5, 2020), https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-seeks-voting-stop-25762f69b27dfbccc4fd8077fb5fdc91.
[10] Id..
[11] Id.
[12] Romero, supra note 1.
[13] Barrett, supra note 3.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
