IT’S TIME TO STOP “STOP THE STEAL,” and begin the transition
Over the last week it’s become apparent that the seemingly endless Presidential campaign has finally ended with Joe Biden’s victory. To be clear, most states still have a few outstanding ballots to count and the final totals to tabulate. There’s also Trump’s ongoing legal challenges and possible recounts. At this point the likelihood of any of these efforts changing the results in any state is extremely unlikely. Even if Trump does prevail in one of his challenges and a recount changed the result it wouldn’t be enough. Trump needs at least 3 states reversed to change the end result of the election. In other words, there is essentially no chance that Trump goes to bed on the night of January 20th as President of the United States.
Many Republicans however are convinced that the masterminds in control of the Democratic party somehow managed to steal this election. They believe these Democratic officials orchestrated a massive nationwide conspiracy to create tens of thousands of fraudulent Democratic votes without being detected by Republican election officials and observers. So, I guess the same geniuses that nominated a 78-year-old man who had twice lost the Presidency and has a series of sexual harassment allegations against him are now criminal wizards.
Ok, one question though, if Democrats pulled off the heist of the century to steal the presidency why didn’t they take the Senate while they were at it. That prize is at least as important as the Presidency. But the fact is, overall down ballot Republicans had a pretty good election night. They even picked up ten or so seats in the House and defended most of their Senate seats. They want us to believe the Democrats forgot to steal the Senate and House races while they were sealing the Presidency? That’s a tough sell.
All we have to do is look at some of the election results to see how ridiculous these claims of massive voter fraud are. There were several key Senate races that the polls consistently showed were either neck and neck or the Democrat had the lead. However, when the actual votes were cast, they went decidedly more Republican than expected. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Thom Tillis were both thought to be dead in the water but unexpectedly won their elections. Senator Lindsey Graham’s race appeared to be a dead heat, but he ended up winning by 12 points. If the Democrats wanted to steal an election these would have been the obvious ones to take. Many expected Democratic wins in these races so it wouldn’t have obviously led to suspension of fraud. Even Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell seemed to be in a close race but ended up winning in a landslide.
We saw similar results in Governor races as well. New Hampshire continues to be a purple state in the generally blue New England region. Biden received 52.8% of the vote but the Democratic candidate governor only received 33.4% in his loss to Republican Chris Sununu. In neighboring Vermont Republican Phil Scott received 68.8% of the vote while Donald Trump only received 30.8%. Most Vermonters who voted for Biden also voted Republican for governor. If there was widespread voter fraud that would be an unlikely result. One sign of voter fraud is a candidate significantly outperforming the pre-election polls. In this case it was the Republicans who consistently outperformed the polls. That isn’t, in itself, proof of anything. It does indicate however, if there was fraud, it’s more likely it was the Republicans who are the guilty party.
But let’s consider the scale of fraud that would be necessary for the Democrats to pull this off. Trump seems to believe he won the popular vote. He’s clearly said he won the popular vote in 2016 many times. For that to be true this year the Democrats would have needed to fraudulently cast over 5 million extra votes. However, I’ll limit myself to the six states Trump has focused on: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. Stealing these states required at least 300,000 fraudulent votes. Keep in mind each of these states has an elections division with bi-partisan election observers to make sure everything is done on the up and up. To believe these claims requires believing the Democrats perpetrated this massive fraud without alerting any of the officials charged with ensuring election integrity.
To get some idea of the magnitude of fraud required to pull this off it’s worth looking at past election fraud. The conservative Heritage Foundation has a useful election fraud database. I looked at documented cases of voter fraud for 2018 and 19. I wanted to see both the prevalence and the types of common voter fraud. What this reveals is many of the cases of voter fraud aren’t the type of cases that would have any effect on a Presidential race. There are quite a few cases of people registering to vote in the wrong district or candidates forging petitions to get on the ballot.
Of the cases involving fraudulent votes being cast, one of the most common is people voting twice. Usually this involves people who have recently moved or who own two homes. Basically, they’re registered at two different addresses. There were some cases of a parent voting for an adult child or a child voting for an elderly parent. In all these cases there’s no larger conspiracy. They’re isolated cases with no coordination and don’t obviously benefit one party over the other. There only appears to be about Ten cases like this per year. Yeah, ten cases in the entire country. Of course, presumably there are some that aren’t caught. However, safeguards like comparing signatures and national databases designed to detect when someone has registered in another state typically root out these cases.
Trump’s nightmare of noncitizens voting is another type of fraudulent voting that happens every year. Also in this group are people who are ineligible to vote due to criminal convictions. Again, the numbers are very small. In 2018 there were 22 people convicted for this type of activity, most coming in one case that caught multiple people. In 2019 the number of cases of ineligible voters was 8.
There are also isolated cases of conspiracy to influence voting. There was a mayor who fraudulently notarized some invalid ballots. A precinct in Pennsylvania where poll workers harassed Republican voters. Several candidates who gave gifts to voters for their support. One case in which someone forged the signatures of deceased voters and another involving someone stealing ballots from mailboxes.
The distinguishing characteristic in all these cases is they involve local elections and only involve a small number of votes. This makes sense once you consider the scale of the conspiracy required to steal an election. In a city council race if two or three people conspire to fake a 100 votes in a close race that might be enough to swing the results while involving a small enough number of people to keep it quiet. Even then routine database checks against lists of people who have died or complaints from people who didn’t get their ballots usually exposes the fraud. The only partial exception to this rule was the North Carolina Congressional race from 2019. In that race a Republican operative working for Congressman Mark Harris fraudulently collected and filled in hundreds of ballots. This fraud put the outcome of the race that was decided by 905 votes in doubt. Government officials eventually invalidated the election and they had to redo the whole thing.
The North Carolina case shows the impracticality of attempting large scale voter fraud. The number of people involved, the skewed statistical results and complaints from voters made it obvious to anyone who looked at the situation that something irregular had happened. This was an election involving just one district, not a statewide race. To pull this off in a Presidential race in Georgia would require fraud 10 times larger than the one in North Carolina. Trump is saying the Democrats did that in six states without any election officials detecting anything out of the ordinary. That simply isn’t plausible.
It’s rare for a recount to change more than a couple hundred votes and Biden currently holds a lead of more than twelve thousand in each of these six states. When Barack Obama won the Presidency in 2008, President Bush started the transition that night. When Donald Trump won 2016 the Obama administration started the process the next day despite the closeness of the election. The transition should officially start once the result is apparent under the Presidential Act of 1963. This is true even while the ballot count is finishing up.
This is important because it gives the new President access to government resources needed to govern on the first day in office. This year Trump is pressuring government officials to hold up the transition, possibly for weeks. Trump has the right to continue challenging the results, but given the near certainty of how this is going to turn out, President Trump has an obligation to the country to ensure we are ready for the orderly transition of power. Republicans and Trump’s allies need to tell the President it’s time to put the interest of the country before his own and prepare for a transition of power, even while the final results of the election are being certified.
Additional Reading:
Heritage Foundation voter fraud database
The Atlantic article on the N.C. Congressional fraud from 2019
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