Ever since George Washington, candidates for president who have lost elections, concede defeat, and go home. *the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next)* This is a rarity in the world, but our system of representative government, more than two hundred years old, is, in fact, the oldest in existence. No country other than ours is living under the same form of government, a republic, under which it was established.
Editor Note: <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/when-did-vice-presidency-stop-going-to-second-place-ask-smithsonian-180957199/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">When Did the Vice Presidency Stop Going to the 2nd Place Winner:</a> That was in 1804, when the 12th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, says <em>David Ward, senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery</em>. The amendment was proposed after the 1796 election resulted in a president (John Adams) and vice president (Thomas Jefferson) from opposing parties, and the 1800 election led to a tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. They were members of the same party (Democratic-Republican), but it took the House of Representatives 36 contentious ballots to break the tie, electing Jefferson president and Burr vice president. In 1804, Jefferson was re-elected and George Clinton became the first vice president under the 12th Amendment.
That is why it is unusual to hear President Trump say that he may not accept the results of the November election. He was recently asked whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election, win or lose. He said, “We’ll have to see what happens.”
Editor Note: The Playboy Magazine White House Correspondent asked the President if he would leave the White House, "win, lose or draw." That the President would not leave the White House if he should WIN or the election should be a draw is legitimate. The White House position is that the eleciton must be verified.
He was asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News about accepting the results of the election and he said, “I have to see. Look, you—-I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say so, and I didn’t last time either.”
At his rallies, the president tells cheering audiences that he will surely win.
Read Also: Pony Express or Phony Express? Mail-in voting another liberal scheme
It is certainly unusual for a candidate to proclaim that he will lose only if there is dishonest corruption in counting the ballots. (Hillary Clinton says Biden should not concede the election ‘under any circumstances’) In the last election, Hillary Clinton had no problem conceding defeat despite the fact that she received almost 3 million more popular votes than Mr. Trump. (*ditor Note: The electoral college decision not being contested until modern election*s[ – From Time.com – These Presidents Won the Electoral College — But Not the Popular Vote](https://time.com/5579161/presidents-elected-electoral-college/))
Editor Note: Hillary Clinton and Democrats have long claimed that Trump is an illegitimate president and have refused to accept his presidency as legitimate: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/politics/hillary-clinton-2016-trump/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">From CNN - Hillary Clinton just floated the possibility of contesting the 2016 election</a> The 2016 Democratic nominee, who won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, is expressly leaving open the possibility that she would pursue legal action to invalidate the last presidential election. <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XQesfLIycJw?start=67" width="560"></iframe>
We are living in a difficult time, with the coronavirus pandemic still very much with us.
Many voters, perhaps most, prefer to vote by mail rather than subject themselves to long lines and potential health dangers. President Trump and his wife vote by absentee ballot.
<pre style="text-align: left;">Editor Note: The President and First Lady, like the military, vote by absentee ballot, which requires a process. Democrats are pushing forward universal mail-in ballots that do not require any authentication before a ballot is received. Universal mail-in voting is a different process than absentee voting, though Democrat are saying they are the same.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University recently issued a report entitled, “The Myth of Voter Fraud.” It revealed that voter fraud of any kind “is very rare,” and voter impersonation is “virtually nonexistent.” Mail ballots, it declared, “are essential for holding a safe election amid Covid-19 and security concerns can be easily addressed.”
Editor Note: <a href="https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States</a>
Donald Trump, who has regularly voted by mail for years, says, “Mail-in voting is a terrible thing.” He overlooks the fact that in the last two federal elections where Americans cast a mail ballot in five states, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. In 28 additional states, all voters have the right to vote by mail ballot if they choose to.
Fraud rates, according to the Brennan Center, remain “infinitesimally small.” Oregon, for example, has sent over 100 million mail-in ballots since 2000 and has documented only about a dozen cases of fraud.
Editor Note: <a href="https://abc13.com/texas-vote-by-mail-fraud-ken-paxton-in-ballot-gregg-county-commission-arrested/6544331/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">From Texas official and 3 others indicted on 134 felonies in mail-in ballot fraud case</a> <iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="267" src="https://abc13.com/video/embed/?pid=6428953" width="476"></iframe>
Benjamin l. Ginsberg, the Republican attorney who co-chaired the bipartisan 2013 Presidential Commission on Administration and has practiced election law for 38 years, says that there is no evidence that election fraud is widespread or that our elections are ”rigged.”
He is particularly critical of the president’s rhetoric in this regard:
“Legions of Republican lawyers have searched in vain over four decades for fraudulent double voting. At long last, they have a blatant example of a major politician urging his supporters to illegally vote twice. The only hitch is that the candidate is Donald Trump. The president, who has been arguing that our elections are ‘rigged’ and ‘fraudulent’…instructed voters to act in a way that would fulfill that. Prophecy…In North Carolina he urged supporters to double vote, casting ballots at the polls even if they have already mailed in absentee ballots.”Ginsberg points out that on each Election Day since 1984, “I’ve been in precincts looking for voting violations, or in Washington helping run the nationwide GOP Election Day operations…The President has said that they only way we can lose …is if cheating goes on.’ He has asserted that Mail-in voting is ‘very dangerous and that there is tremendous fraud involved and tremendous illegality.’ The lack of evidence makes these claims unsustainable. The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents—-by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged.”
The conservative Heritage Foundation Election Fraud Database has compiled every instance of any kind of voter fraud it could find since 1982. It contains 1,296 incidents, a tiny percentage of the votes cast. A study of the results in three states where all voters are mailed ballots, a practice the president cites as leading to fraud, it found just 372 possible cases of illegal voting of 14.6 million cast in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, 0.0025 per cent.
In Benjamin Ginsberg’s view,
“The president’s rhetoric has put my party in the position of a firefighter who deliberately sets fires to look like a hero putting them out. Republicans need to take a hard look…Calling elections ‘fraudulent’ and results ‘rigged’ with almost nonexistent evidence is antithetical to being the ‘rule of law’ party.”
Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee in September, Christopher Wray, director of the F.B.I. declared that,
“We have not seen historically any evidence of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a national election, either by mail or otherwise.”
Charges of widespread election fraud have no basis in fact. Justin Levitt, Professor of law at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles reviewed U.S. elections from 2000-2014 and found 31 incidents of voter fraud at a time when more than a billion votes were cast. Other studies confirm this reality
What the president’s motives may be in casting doubt on the integrity of our elections is not clear.
