The Presidential Election: A Work in Process
The only ones trying to influence the election are the ones who aren’t interested in counting the legal votes.
The media must be awfully forgiving. After four years of hammering home how suspect our election process is — how vulnerable it is to meddling and interference — they’re suddenly comfortable with it. What happened to the talking heads who insisted that tech glitches had impacted the Midwest votes in 2016? Or that our online systems had been hacked? Like magic, their suspicions have vanished. Now, despite six states’ worth of questions and a mail-in system that’s ripe for more abuse, Americans realize: the only ones trying to influence the election are the ones who aren’t interested in counting the legal votes.
The American people, it turns out, are completely united on that front. The day before the election, a Hill/Harris X poll found almost unanimous support — 85 percent — across the parties for an exhaustive process to confirm the outcome. Asked whether the priority should be counting the legal votes or having the results “as soon as possible,” only 15 percent were in favor of what we’re seeing play out in the news media today. Look, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, “The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do.” We’ll know who the winner is, he went on, “when all lawful votes have been counted, recounts finished, and allegations of fraud addressed.” In the meantime, what’s the rush? What does Joe Biden possibly have to gain by claiming victory if half the country doesn’t believe it?
Back in 2000, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said on “Washington Watch,” “the Democrats felt extremely comfortable with Al Gore having 37 days.” Then, as in now, the most important thing was making sure Americans could trust the process. Right now, 71 million voters are watching this unfold and wondering, like Louie is, how did President Trump’s coattails help the state legislature, the House Republicans, and Senate, and “not elect the guy in the coat?”
“I’ve talked to some of the attorneys handling the suits for the president,” he explained, “…and there are numerous grounds for having a recount — and not just because the margin of error, that’s a basis for a recount. But there are so many improprieties and anomalies and things that just can’t physically happen.” Other people, like Victor Davis Hanson, are just frustrated that this many Americans even found the stomach to vote for Joe Biden at all. “There was massive voter fraud. I believe that. But nonetheless, this shouldn’t even have been close–the margins in places like Michigan or Wisconsin, even Minnesota or Pennsylvania — given what [President Trump] had done for the country.”
For now, at least, the wheels of justice are churning. U.S. Attorney General William Barr has agreed to investigate Republicans’ concerns — where appropriate. Making it clear that states are the lead dog when it comes to supervising elections, he did say that DOJ has “an obligation to ensure that federal elections are conducted in such a way that the American people can have full confidence in their electoral process and their government.” Before any states certify their results, he authorized his team to “pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities.” Maybe it won’t be of a scale to impact the outcome of the election, Barr said, but that’s not a good reason to ignore it.
His state counterparts are also going on offense. Ten of them — state attorneys general in Ohio, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, South Dakota, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, and Oklahoma — are now signed on to the legal challenge in Pennsylvania. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision overstepped its constitutional responsibility, encroached on the authority of the Pennsylvania legislature, and violated the plain language of the Election Clauses,” they write. In the state’s own legislature, members are demanding an audit of the votes. And no wonder. Right now, there are about 100,000 votes out of 150 million cast deciding states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Nevada. If this were Joe Biden, trailing by such a small margin, we would be dealing with the exact same scenario — except for one thing. The media, ever eager to delegitimize Trump, would never have called the election.
“Let’s have no lectures,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told his colleagues on the Senate floor, “about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept the preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election… The core principle here is not complicated. In the United States of America, all legal ballots must be counted; any illegal ballots must not be; the process should be transparent and observable by all sides, and the courts are here to work through concerns.
Our institutions are built for this. We have the system in place to consider concerns. And President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options… And if Democrats feel confident [he has no case], they should no reason to fear extra scrutiny.”
Originally published here.
2000 v. 2020: A Study in Media Bias
If Americans thought the 2000 election was painful, buckle up. This is like five Floridas, Victor Davis Hanson warns. Dealing with contested counts in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania is the mother of all contested elections. Which is why, he writes, “Millions of voters find it rich that suddenly the Democratic Party is vouching for a pristine voting count” — after four years of warning that the system was irrevocably broken! And where is the media in all of this? Messaging for the Left instead of reporting.
“It’s very different [from 2000],” John Stemberger agreed on “Washington Watch.” How they handled Al Gore’s challenge was night and day with how these seven days have gone. Stemberger, who was part of George W. Bush’s Florida legal team at the time, could only shake his head. “Back then, the media respected their role and their limitations. And most of all, they respected the institutions of the court, the secretary of state, and the elections officials.”
Now, he says, the problem is that “the ideological divide is so wide that the Left has completely co-opted the media. They’ve become an arm of the Biden campaign. So they don’t view themselves as just merely reporters. [They], in fact, view themselves as advocates and activists to further the cause.” If you turn on CNN, “they’re just dripping with animus toward the president. [It’s] as if they’re being paid by the campaign to advocate for Biden’s victory.”
Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. The press has been hounded Donald Trump since before he was even in office. They gave rise to every phony allegation — whether it was Russian collusion or Ukraine — and when they were proven wrong, they never came back to correct the story. They just moved on to the next “scandal” and used that as another distraction from all the good the administration was doing. This time around, though, any election interference was theirs alone. We all saw the manufactured polls, showing Joe Biden running away with the presidency. In these close results, Americans see what exactly what the media was doing trying to shape the outcome by dampening and discouraging conservative turnout.
The stakes are too high to turn our backs on the process. And, as John says, that process ought to matter just as much to Democrats as Republicans. “The thing that’s frustrating is that [nobody] knows if this is a legitimate election. Look, if we lost fair and square — hey, God is sovereign,” Stemberger pointed out. “[We’ll] go on and live our lives and respect the civil magistrate.” But until then, the media needs to get out of the business of calling this election before it’s over. “We’re only in the first week of this dispute, and there are about four or five states involved. [The press] can make their predictions, but they cannot announce to the people who the president is going to be. That’s not constitutional. That’s not the way it works… The president is entitled to due process… And until it’s over, it’s not over, and we should be acting like it’s over.”
The courts aren’t perfect any more than the rest of the government. But it’s critical to the future confidence that we place in our republic that we allow these results to be litigated. At least, we should have more reason to believe that the results are accurate and reflect what actually happened at the polls. “The Democrats benefit from that same equation,” John pointed out. “They’re doing a disservice to their own movement by trying to force it.”
Originally published here.
A Sudden Loss, a Forever Legacy
I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing of Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. The nation has lost a fearless minister of the gospel, and I have lost a dear friend. Harry and I came from opposite sides of the tracks in Cincinnati, but we walked a shared path together through our Christian faith. In 2005 when we first met, Harry, although conservative, was a registered Democrat. We began discussing immigration, the ethnic divide, and the climate, among other topics. That conversation led to us co-authoring a book entitled, Personal Faith Public Policy. We took on the difficult policy issues that divided the two political parties and found common ground through Scripture.
After the Lord enabled him to overcome cancer, Harry’s preaching and public proclamations were marked with a fearlessness that only comes from understanding your mortality and your purpose. I am grateful for our friendship, his leadership, and his legacy. His family is in my prayers.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
