The Courts
After the 2020 elections, there were fifty-eight legal cases challenging the Presidential results. Fifty-eight times lawyers went to Courts; local, state and Federal; to challenge the narrow Joe Biden victory over Donald Trump. And fifty-seven times, the varying Courts in the United States found that the election count was accurate. Not surprisingly, most cases were in the “swing states”:
- Pennsylvania – 17 cases
- Georgia – 12 cases
- Michigan – 8 cases
- Wisconsin – 7 cases
- Arizona – 7 cases
- Nevada – 2 cases
- Texas – 2 cases
- Washington, DC – 1 case
- Minnesota – 1 case
- New Mexico – 1 case
(The Ohio State University has a full listing of all of the cases).
The election results of 2020 were “fully litigated”. Several went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, a body already slanted for the Republican President. But even those Justices failed to find reason to rule in his favor. Trump finally sent a mob to disrupt the Congressional certification of the election on January 6th, 2021. But the Insurrection failed, and on January 20th, Joe Biden was sworn in as the forty-sixth President.
The States
In Arizona, the Republican state legislature ordered a full investigation of their 2020 votes. They hired the “Cyber-Ninjas” to do a detailed audit of every vote. The “Ninjas” were really hired to “fix” the results in Trump’s favor. But even they couldn’t do it, because, there was no “fix” in the first place. After spending millions of Arizona dollars, all the “Ninjas” could do was slink out of town. The results didn’t change.
In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State machine counted the votes once, then ordered a physical hand count of every Georgia ballot. He then had a machine count taken again. Biden won the election, all three times.
So why is the WINNER of the 2024 Presidential election, now the forty-seventh President Donald Trump, still trying to “win” the 2020 election?
Original Lost Cause
In the decades after the American Civil War, the former Confederacy waged a renewed battle, this time with what in modern terms we would call a “propaganda” campaign. At the time of the war the struggle was clearly a Nation divided by Southern determination to maintain slavery. But the story was “re-imagined” as a war for “state sovereignty” over “federal over-reach”.
The massacre of black soldiers at Fort Pillow was forgotten, and the heroism of Pickett’s Charge elevated. In the early 20th century, monuments were erected to Southern sacrifice all over the South. The Confederate generals were exalted over the Union leaders who defeated them. Confederate Robert E Lee was the brilliant strategist; Union General Ulysses S Grant just a “butcher”.
By the 1950’s, most Americans, North and South, had a totally different view of the Civil War than those who actually participated in it. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that our education system began to look at the “Lost Cause” movement for what it was; a false story written by the loser to justify their sacrifice and failure. The “Lost Cause” remains a force today. It’s difficult for many Americans to put false “education” of decades aside, and deal with the fact of an economic system built on the forced labor of enslaved humans.
Modern Lost Cause
The Trump Administration, like the defeated Confederacy of old, is trying to re-write history. They have their own “Lost Cause”, the election of 2020 when the reality of the Covid Pandemic turned a close margin of the Nation’s vote from Trump to Biden. (Just as the reality of inflation resulting from Covid recovery narrowly turned the Nation from Harris back to Trump). But, in their mythology, Trump couldn’t lose. So it must be some conspiracy, some cabal of liberal Democrats that nefariously altered the results.
Speaker Mike Johnson explained it all so well this week. He acknowledged that there is no evidence of election fraud, no reasonable scenario where the 2020 election was “stolen”. But, he said, it didn’t “feel right”. After all, as they counted the votes, Trump was winning, and then, as the count went on, he lost.
Commentators call it the “Red Mirage”, when typical modern voting behaviors cause more Republican votes to be counted “up front”, and more Democratic votes counted afterwards. For example: Pennsylvania reports out the election day votes before any absentee or early votes are reported. So if more Republicans vote on election day then Republicans look like they’re winning on the first reports. More Democrats vote early or absentee, so later reports “drift” back to Democratic as more ballots are added. But Johnson claims that this is “evidence” of fraud, even though the explanation was clear even before the counting began.
Johnson must know this. But he’s willing to use his “feelings” to persuade Americans that there is something “crooked” with the American electoral system. And that “crookedness” isn’t historical for Johnson and the Trump cohort, it’s their “evidence” of current and even future election rigging. It’s their excuse to take control of the election process.
Elections in America
The US Constitution is clear on the point: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time make or alter such regulations…” (Article I, Section 4). States control elections, Congress may make regulations regarding them.
But President Trump wants to “Federalize” the election process, particularly in those states that voted against him in the last elections. A “Federalized” process would be a Trump controlled process, the final step in making sure he stays in office, even after his second term expires. He would make the “Red Mirage” a real thing, cutting off vote counts when he is ahead, regardless of the remaining ballots left uncounted, as he suggested in 2020.
What’s to Lose
The goal of the Republican leaders is to make Americans “feel” that the elections are “rigged”. That would make them more amenable to changes to our election system, even though a “Federalized” system is more likely to be “hacked” (perhaps the point). Currently the United States has fifty-one different systems. That diversity is one of the ways that we secure our elections from interference.
The “Lost Cause” myth of the 2020 election isn’t just a way to assuage Trump’s hurt ego. Here’s what Trump has to lose. If a 2026 Congressional election puts Congress in Democratic hands, Trump will face two years of opposition, investigation and probable impeachment. And if 2028 puts a Democrat in the White House, it’s unlikely they’ll make the same mistake Biden made in 2021. It won’t take two years to begin an investigation of Trump’s improprieties as President.
There is an entire theory that Trump ran for President in 2024 to avoid the Jack Smith investigation. Now that he’s in office, surely he’ll continue to do whatever he can to stay out of jail. His willingness to alter or abolish our voting system to save himself from the consequences of his actions, is a seminal threat to American Democracy.
