As promising as it is to see that forensic audits are happening in various battleground states where allegations of fraud and irregularities have been made, I know that no matter what they find, it won’t end the debate about 2020. And that’s not just because the Electoral College has spoken and, thus, the election can’t be reversed.
Here’s the problem: Even if there is enough fraud found to alter the results, Democrats won’t believe it. The audits, they’ll say, can’t be trusted because they were partisan and conducted by Republicans who can’t accept the election results.
But Democrats hardly have the high ground when it comes to accepting election results. Let’s not forget that both of George W. Bush’s victories were disputed by Democrats. In 2000, Democrats literally tried to disenfranchise military ballots to eke out a victory for Al Gore. Their constantly changing parameters for what should and shouldn’t count during the recounts ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court stepping in. Democrats never quite got over that defeat, which hinged on just over 500 votes. Several Democrats in Congress attempted to challenge the results of the 2004 presidential election, claiming election irregularities in Ohio may have altered the outcome. A recount in Ohio only netted Kerry about 300 votes statewide, but that didn’t stop Democrats from filing an objection to the counting of Ohio’s electoral votes and delaying certification of the presidential election results. As recently as 2018, John Kerry said he believes that the election was stolen from him.
But in 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama won, you didn’t see Republicans claiming fraud or trying to delay the certification of results. There were no serious challenges to the outcome. Republicans, while stung, accepted defeat. Fast forward to 2016, when Democrats disputed the results because they lost. They simply had a hard time believing that a Republican could win, let alone Trump. So the Russian collusion hoax happened, which hung like a dark cloud over Trump’s entire presidency. To this day, some Democrats believe with all their hearts and souls that Vladimir Putin won the election for Donald Trump in 2016.
Oh, but Republicans calling out election irregularities in 2020 is a threat to our democracy? The 2020 election was the first election in my lifetime–and probably ever–where Republicans lost and disputed the outcome. So, cry me a river, Democrats. We have a record of accepting defeat in a way you don’t.
In the course of four years, Democrats went from believing Putin stole the election for Trump to insisting the next election was the safest and most secure election in history. We are supposed to believe that this miraculously unassailable election was not only achievable in four short years, but that it happened despite the unprecedented changes (legal and illegal) to election procedures due to the pandemic. This is where things get dicey because no one can honestly say that such an election could be so perfect as to merit censoring those who say it wasn’t.
And that’s perhaps the most troubling thing about this. If you doubted the results, you weren’t even given the courtesy of a debate about the evidence. Instead, you were censored on social media and deemed a lunatic. It’s as though the left doesn’t actually care about election integrity at all.
RELATED: Five Things Democrats Could Do To Convince Us They Don’t Want Widespread Voter Fraud
Unfortunately, Democrats have shown that election integrity is not what they want. Well, Democrats in Congress, anyway. They consistently want to loosen restrictions, even though Democrat voters are actually on board with election integrity provisions Republicans support.
Democrats had an opportunity to make a gesture of good faith showing that they believe in election integrity. They could have supported forensic audits in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Instead, they cried foul. They acted like they were worried about what an audit might find instead of confident in the election results. Imagine for a second that Democrats, instead of opposing the audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, had decided that a forensic audit would prove once and for all that Joe Biden legitimately won the state and supported it as long as they were allowed to help determine which private firms would be on the audit team.
While we don’t know what the findings of the Maricopa County audit are yet, from the very beginning, it’s been branded a “partisan audit” or a “Republican audit” to preemptively dispute the findings. However, a truly bipartisan audit with an audit team chosen by both parties is the only way the audit results have a chance of being accepted by most voters on both sides of the aisle.
There will always be people who believe their candidate is the only legitimate winner. There are still Democrats who believe that Al Gore won in 2000, that John Kerry won in 2004, that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, or that Trump won in 2020. Don’t forget that a mere one out of four voters believes the correct candidate was declared the winner in the last two presidential elections, according to a March survey from Scott Rasmussen. So, without a bipartisan approach to resolving these disputed results, our republic will eventually not be able to withstand the pressure.
Instead, Democrats have chosen to act guilty, like they have something to hide—or like they know the election was rife with fraud and are worried about getting caught. Maybe there was substantial fraud, but not results-changing fraud. Regardless, they don’t want to find out. So, they’ll continue to treat every election they lose as unfair and stolen, while every election they win is the epitome of security and fairness.
Ultimately, we all have something to gain if we can have faith in the results of every election, regardless of the outcome. But, unfortunately, something tells me that Democrats don’t want this.
