On Nov. 15, President Donald Trump posted a series of tweets claiming the Nov. 3 election was “rigged.” Election officials, however, have rejected Trump’s claims.
As allegations of election manipulation dwindle from battleground state courts, President Donald Trump promised President-elect Joe Biden an enduring fight in a series of tweets on Nov. 15. Biden won the popular vote by a margin of 4.7 percent – or 5,719,826 votes – and the Electoral College by crossing the 270 threshold.
The first of the tweets, sent by Trump at 6:47 a.m., asserted that “[Joe Biden] won because the Election was Rigged.” The statement was flagged by Twitter as disputed. The rest read “NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more!”
At 8:16 a.m., the president tweeted: “RIGGED ELECTION. WE WILL WIN.”
Later that day: “I WON THE ELECTION!”
Three minutes later: “He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”
However, election officials from both parties in every state have rejected the president’s claims in a statement made by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”
The morning following the president’s series of tweets, the Associated Press reported that voter fraud lawsuits filed the previous week by conservative lawyers from True the Vote in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were dismissed with no further details.
However, the Trump campaign itself still has cases pending review while others have been dismissed or settled.
The administration was victorious in two Pennsylvania cases. The rulings allowed for poll-watchers to stand physically closer to mail-in ballot tallying as well as a rejection of mail-in ballots with no valid I.D. submitted within six days after the election. The rulings are not expected to impact more than a few thousand votes in a state that Biden won by a margin of 67,000 ballots, according to the AP.
The president remains persistent in Pennsylvania, too.
On Tuesday, Nov. 17, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, appeared before the media in Williamsport and declared that “the best description of this situation is widespread, nationwide voter fraud.”
The former federal prosecutor and New York City mayor also announced his intentions “to sue in at least eight or nine” states alleged to have prohibited ballot counters from observing ballots, according to reporting from CNBC.
The lawyer is also confident that the president’s case is airtight.
“I believe we have amassed more than enough evidence in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and Georgia,” Giuliani asserted during his presser. “I believe we’re very close in Nevada.”
Missouri’s winner-take-all electoral votes were taken by Trump, and there are no open disputes in the “Show Me” state’s final count for president.
“We are not aware of any alleged cases of voter fraud during the November election cycle,” Eric Fey of the St. Louis County Election Board wrote in an email to The Journal.
On Nov. 9, Attorney General William Barr dispersed a memo to federal attorneys that investigations “may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.”
The Department of Justice does not traditionally investigate allegations of voter fraud until after an election is certified.
When every state’s electors have become certified, Biden’s election will be confirmed by the Electoral College on Dec. 14, and he will be sworn into office on Jan. 21.
However, Trump’s refusal to concede the outcome of the election has also hampered the transition process for Biden, and it may come at a very real cost to Americans, according to the President-elect.
“More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” he said bluntly during a Nov. 16 press conference.
Under normal conditions, an executive handoff involves prepositioning personnel and providing the incoming president with intelligence briefings, but there is an added layer of complexity when factoring in a pandemic that has claimed 240,000 Americans as well.
The ability to coordinate and integrate the incoming president’s team into the White House rests with one agency director.
Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, is the lynchpin to the presidential transition process, which starts when she ‘ascertains’ the election and releases funds to start the procedure.
Murphy has yet to certify Biden as the winner of the election and has made no public statements about the delay in her decision yet.
Unfunded and in-the-dark, President-elect Biden says: “There’s so much we can do. The only way we do any of this is if we work together. I know we can do this.”
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