Still Waiting, Still Counting, Still Lying
Here we are on Friday, three days after election day in the US, and we don't have a firm answer on who our next president will be. The vote was close in many states, and with a surge in mail-in voting due to the Coronavirus pandemic some states are needing extra time to count the ballots.
This chart from the New York Times today (6 Nov 2020) shows there are five states where ballots are still being counted and the result is still too close to call:
The full picture, if you will, is bigger than just these five states. And no, I don't mean because the infographic shows six states. (Alaska is still counting but Trump is way far ahead there, and based on polling the final result is not expect to be close.) Vice President Joe Biden has won Wisconsin, but by a margin of just over 20,000 votes. The Trump campaign is demanding a recount there. They have announced intent to demand recounts in other states, too. They are also filing suit in many states, cities, and counties alleging vote fraud.
So far despite their widespread claims of fraud- repeated not just by President Trump but also his campaign staff and his surrogates in government and the right-wing media- they have offered very little actual evidence of supposed wrongdoing, and of what scant evidence they have produced virtually all of it has been debunked. They know it's false and they're doing it anyway. In short, they are lying.
Their intent would seem to be to a) tie up the election in the legal system to delay the transfer of power to Joe Biden, assuming he is the factual winner, and b) sow so much doubt about the integrity of the election in the minds of Trump's supporters that they consider anything less than a reelection of Trump as a state coup. Just like in a banana republic.
This chart from the New York Times today (6 Nov 2020) shows there are five states where ballots are still being counted and the result is still too close to call:
The full picture, if you will, is bigger than just these five states. And no, I don't mean because the infographic shows six states. (Alaska is still counting but Trump is way far ahead there, and based on polling the final result is not expect to be close.) Vice President Joe Biden has won Wisconsin, but by a margin of just over 20,000 votes. The Trump campaign is demanding a recount there. They have announced intent to demand recounts in other states, too. They are also filing suit in many states, cities, and counties alleging vote fraud.
So far despite their widespread claims of fraud- repeated not just by President Trump but also his campaign staff and his surrogates in government and the right-wing media- they have offered very little actual evidence of supposed wrongdoing, and of what scant evidence they have produced virtually all of it has been debunked. They know it's false and they're doing it anyway. In short, they are lying.
Their intent would seem to be to a) tie up the election in the legal system to delay the transfer of power to Joe Biden, assuming he is the factual winner, and b) sow so much doubt about the integrity of the election in the minds of Trump's supporters that they consider anything less than a reelection of Trump as a state coup. Just like in a banana republic.