It’s Tuesday, November 5th at 7:30 p.m., and more polls are expected to close in the Midwest at the top of the hour. Vice-Presidential Harris has 89 elector votes based on winning New England (minus one elector in Maine) and the mid-Atlantic States (New York, New Jersey, Maeryland, etc.) she was expected to win. The Southeast (including the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina) have to gone ex-President Donald Trump who now has 135 electoral votes, temporarily putting him in the lead over Harris. Pennsylvania is too close to call, but with 65% of the votes counted in the Keystone state, Harris is ahead by eleven percent. Polls suggest she will carry Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, but the polls there are still open and will close at 8:00 p.m. EST. The crowd at Mar-a-Lago is restless. There is an announcement that former President Donald Trump will address the attendees at his victory celebration at any moment.
At 7:45 p.m. he strides into the room and goes straight to the podium. He announces that based on his own political polls which are the best in the country and based on what he is hearing from everyone around him, he will be easily confirmed as the 47th President of the United States. He claims victory in the election saying it will turn out to be a landslide, and says he is not about to let the Democrats steal this election like they did in 2020, so he urges his followers to stand with him and fight. But with less than half of the electoral votes cast, and with Harris well ahead in Pennsylvania which would, with Wisconsin and Michigan give her the 270 electoral votes needed to win, the question is who is really trying to steal this election?
This scenario is no surprise. Mr. Trump routinely makes false claims, because he believes with some basis in fact that the first one to claim victory whether truthfully or falsely puts the opponent on the defensive. It’s like a boxer who throws the first punch before the referee tells the competitors to shake. This is why Donald Trump ripped Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to shreds before DeSantis formally announced his candidacy for President. Trump wanted to define DeSantis as a loser before DeSantis could define himself.
In fact, Donald Trump has been planning for this moment for the better part of a year. This is why the Republicans have filed stacks of law suits and rule changes to election laws in the last few weeks or so. They are basically throwing sand in the air to confuse people (if even their fellow Republicans) and create reasonable doubt, allowing Mr. Trump to challenge the result of whatever states Kamala Harris wins. For example, in Pennsylvania, his campaign got the state Supreme Court to agree that if a voter submits a perfectly filled out ballot, but neglects to place a date and such a date in a specified formal on the envelopecontaining the ballot, the ballot, itself, will not count. In Georgia, the Republican controlled legislature and Board of Electors have built in time delays if some county official reasonably believes there “may” be illegal ballots. These delays work in Mr. Trump’s favor and would only be initiated if Kamala Harris appeared to win the state (or that county in a close race.) Another recently implemented change says that you need identification if you hand carry your absentee ballot to the County Clerks office. Apparently, if you mail it in, instead, you do not need an approved ID. You just drop it in the mailbox. In North Carolina, printed ballots had to be recalled because leaving Robert Kennedy’s name on the ballot would have disadvantaged Mr. Trump. Kennedy waiting until the last possible minute to drop out and as a result, North Carolina had to reprint the ballots without his name on them. Even the U.S. House of Representatives is trying to get involved to assist the Republican candidate, by passing a law when existing laws are already on the books. All of these changes could have been made a year ago, but waiting until the last few weeks of an election guarantees confusion, particularly among Democrats who are represented by senior citizens and minorities. Other GOP-friendly initiatives are underway in Nebraska, Arizona and Nevada. Incidentally, all of the states mentioned above with the exception of Nebraska are battleground states that Trump must win.
In order to keep Donald Trump and Republicans from trying once again to steal a Presidential election, Kamala Harris must win decisively. Not only must she win, but Democrats down ballot must win as well.
I urge you to vote as soon as you possible can so there is little opportunity for delay.