Today is the safe harbor deadline, the deadline for states to resolve any and all election related disputes, certify their results, and send their electors to the national archives. Any state that meets this deadline MUST have their electors accepted by congress. From the way things look it seems every state except Wisconsin is going to meet the deadline. I said shortly after the election that every fraud claim should be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. I meant it. That’s why I supported Trump’s right to have all of his cases heard in court. Only when these claims are fully fleshed out can we have faith that our election was free and fair. Now that that has happened I am confident saying that it indeed was.
The President and his allies are 1–51 in post election litigation, and the case that they did win wasn’t even about fraud. They’ve had their cases heard by Republican judges, Democratic judges, judges Trump himself appointed, they’ve filed appeals to rulings they didn’t like and had them heard by different judges, and had some cases make their way all the way up to the Supreme Court, on which, 1/3 of the judges were appointed by Trump. But none of their claims of widespread fraud have stood up to scrutiny; not one. Yes, it’s true, they had stacks of affadavits of people swearing, under penalty of perjury, that they witnessed or heard about fraud, but it’s also true that the elections officials who refuted those claims also signed affadavits and testified under oath, under penalty of perjury.
I won’t pretend to have read every word of every case that’s been heard but from what I have read, often what seemed suspicious had a simple explanation. Many of the witnesses, it was revealed, didn’t take the necessry poll watching training so they didn’t understand proper procedure. But I didn’t take election officials’ word for it. I did my own research and found that their explanations stood up to scrutiny. I was able to independently confirm that election officials often use 01/01/1900 as a placeholder when they don’t have someone’s birthday, which makes it look like voter rolls have an unbelievable number of people over 100 years old. I independently confirmed this by finding a study done by the Government Accountability Institute, a think-tank founded by Steve Bannon. The study is currently listed on the White House’s own website. I also confirmed that signature matching was done twice in Georgia before any vote was counted, and that the ‘Consent Decree’ didn’t make signature matching impossible, it simply required Georgia officials to contact voters who’s ballots had been rejected. I also confirmed that Dominion machines print a paper ballot with a barcode that is then scanned (meaning their is an auditable paper trail). I confirmed this by finding the instructions on the Secretary of State’ websites for both Georgia and Michigan showing voters how to use the machines. I won’t bore you with every allegation I debunked (there were a lot of them) but needless to say none of the allegations stood up to my scrutiny, but more importantly, none of them stood up to the court’s scrutiny.
When they failed in court the campaign went to state legislatures to have public hearings where, it’s worth noting, nobody was under oath. In fact, when a Michigan lawmaker wanted to put Guiliani under oath, they were ruled out of order.
Though many Republicans stayed silent or echoed the President’s allegations a number stood firm, and ultimately, it was Republicans who made sure that the outcome of the election was respected. In addition to the Republican appointed judges, Republican officials like Brad Raffensperger, Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, Kris Krebs, and many others stood firm under immense pressure and we owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.
At the beginning of this, I promised to support the President’s legal efforts, because I believe that Americans’ ability to trust in the credibility of our election is the most important thing, but I also asked Trump supporters, if the courts decide the election was free and fair, if you would accept it?. It’s clear to me after a month of litigation in which the campaign is 1–51, that the risk to the credibility of our election comes not from fraud but from those alleging it; bad actors needlessly casting doubt on the integrity of our election for their own selfish means. This is an attack on the very fabric of our democracy and we must reject it. I believe I’ve kept my part of the bargain, will you?
