After vowing to go to Supreme Court over ‘fraud’ and refusing to commit to conceding to election results for months, the rapidly sinking Titanic of a Trump campaign announced legal action in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania after today’s counted ballots are securing a Joe Biden win. Belligerent Trump supporters barged into Detroit’s Central Counting Board to try to stop the ballot count, alleging that counting, is tantamount to fraud. These desperate attempts are a sad display of a deflated ego, as Trump’s recount in Wisconsin where Biden won by 20,517 votes, won’t occur until December 1st. In Michigan, he’s suing to stop the count on the basis that his poll-watchers aren’t allowed to sit closer to the counters. Biden has won Michigan by 70,511 votes.
The Biden campaign will have barely won over the strongest attack on voting rights and disinformation epidemic in American history. Republican legislative efforts to suppress the vote have long occurred in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Iowa, and more states. The tactics include purging voter rolls like in Georgia and Ohio through ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ laws backed by Trump’s Justice Department. Through this law, over 850,000 eligible Georgia voters were removed off the rolls in 2015.
This election, the Texas Supreme Court had to reject a Republican effort to toss almost 127,000 Harris County votes. And Republicans mobilized 50,000 “poll watchers” to suppress the vote after a 1982 consent decree banning voter intimidation tactics expired Moreover, Trump’s Postmaster General’s sabotaging of the post office is another method destroying our electoral infrastructure. He removed sorting machines and post office boxes, cut overtime work, fired postal veterans, and caused delays.
In Trump’s farewell tantrum, he said he will sue to halt counting in Michigan, sue to halt counting in Pennsylvania, and request a recount in Wisconsin. His suspicion against votes swaying Democratic comes after he spent months telling his base to not vote by mail.
Devastated Trump supporters who Trump told to “stand back and stand by” to, have taken up protesting against ballot-counting — barging into an official counting facility in Detroit and chanting, “Stop the vote!” If any other demographic committed violent attempts to disqualify voters, the law enforcement response would be very different.
Crowd chanting to stop the vote/stop the count at Detroit absentee counter center. pic.twitter.com/pdJWmwbvzR
— Seema (@LATSeema) November 4, 2020
Aggressive challengers causing havoc at Detroit’s Central Counting Board. Make no mistake, operatives’ efforts to disenfranchise and to disqualify ballots will be focused on areas with large numbers of Black voters and voters of color. #CountEveryVote pic.twitter.com/EHE2d6oGZo
— Kristen Clarke 866-OUR-VOTE (@KristenClarkeJD) November 4, 2020
#BREAKING: Large, animated crush of “stop the count” protestors trying to push their way into TCF hall in #Detroit where ballots are being counted.
They’re being blocked by guards at the door.
Pizza boxes are pushed against the window to obstruct view. It’s tense. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/zFhzd88skX
— Steve Patterson (@PattersonNBC) November 4, 2020
This political violence is no surprise after Trump has incited terror these past four years — from calling violent neo-nazis “very fine people,” to saying police should “rough” detainees up, to encouraging supporters to attack protestors saying he would “pay [their] legal fees.
Trump cheered supporters who committed a criminal offense by swarming a Biden bus in Texas and attempting to “run it off the road.” The FBI is investigating this dangerous act. This is just one of many acts of political violence and threats that have emerged alongside right-wing domestic terror.
Nevertheless, we will emerge from the ashes of a Trump presidency that has felt like a century through its hateful destruction of progress. We will rise, rebuild, and push for progressive policies. We will stand up with dignity for the future of our children, the climate, economic and racial justice.
Congratulations to our soon-to-be president-elect Joe Biden.
Leave a Reply