Featured image by Alan Levine. Follow the link for more of this artist’s work.
I am going to say things that some people aren’t going to like, on both sides. The election is for all practical purposes. Biden has a definite lead, and if massive fraud has taken place, that is already baked into the results and will be unlikely to be overturned. I don’t believe that fraud on the level of hundreds of thousands of votes in the four or five states has occurred. It is possible that thousands of votes have sufficient allegations to warrant investigating, but I don’t believe that things are at the level that would overturn the tentative election results.
I think that this election has been and continues to be contentious. I also think that whatever way this election goes, that no one is going to be satisfied with the results. Both sides are going to go through their processes of either winning or losing and neither side will be gracious.
Do I think that we have a lot to do to shore up our voting processes and take away vulnerabilities? Absolutely. During this pandemic, many states opted to test the waters on universal mail-in voting, changing their rules through executive decree and not through the legislative process (which is troubling to me). Instead of a secure chain of custody and/or a non-partisan (or at least fully accountable) organization to handle and transport votes, the USPS was responsible for sending in many ballots with loose chain of custody and an endorsement for a specific candidate, who is the projected winner of the election. While I have relative confidence that this is mere coincidence, wouldn’t it seem fishy if Trump won through mail-in ballots with the endorsement of the USPS?
The allegations of alleged fraud are accusations, backed by people swearing under penalty of perjury that they witnessed impropriety. The process for this is especially important for several reasons. First, we need to have confidence that there is a clear winner, and that any fraud (if found and proven in the court of law which is a higher standard than civil court or the court of public opinion) would not have changed the outcome of this election. Second, it erodes any support it has for people saying that Biden (or Trump) is an illegitimate president regardless of how it turns out. Third, it will reinforce to the American people that we have a process for these things, and that the process works. And Fourth, it will de-escalate the tensions for many Americans who are looking at the institution of voting as an illusion.
If I were Biden, I would tell my supporters to let the process work. I would tell my people that I am confident that I have the votes, and that the process is legitimate. I would emphasize to my followers that Trump is within his legal rights and that his attempts to litigate will ultimately prove fruitless, and that we should be magnanimous in victory. If we are to be a United States again, we cannot continue to travel down this road of humiliation and vilification of our ideological rivals, and that we cannot treat fellow citizens as enemies. We should elevate the discussion out of the mud and muck and return to a sense of reason. For too long we have dwelt in the realm where character assassination is commonplace. We have lived too long in a world where we attack the person and not the argument. We have stayed in a place where we see our differences and not our common ground.
And as much could be said for Trump. He should tell his supporters to be patient and calm when talking about these allegations. He should urge his supporters to treat them as unproven until they can be proven in court. He should prepare his followers to accept the outcome of these suits regardless of their direction, and reinforce to his base that the process worked regardless of if he wins or not, and that they have opportunities in another four years.
The process will work, it does work. We just have to let it. In the age where everything is lightning fast and information comes to us with near instant speed, our ability to be patient has been severely eroded. We must remember that in this particular instance, slow and steady is the speed we need. No mistakes, no lingering questions. No room for reasonable doubt.
A Place 4Politics 