Expecting election-night results on Nov. 3 is looking less likely with universal mail-in voting, not because of voter fraud because it’s going to be difficult for mail-in votes to be counted like electronic voting machines. Whatever happens with the eventual vote, both Republicans and Democrats prepare for the worse case scenario that there is no clear winner for days, possibly weeks, even months. Democrat nominee 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden announced Sept. 16 the Democrat Party will retain hundreds, if not thousands, of election law attorneys ready to take the fight if needed to the courts. No doubt Republicans have also done the same, with both parties recalling the Battle Royale in U.S. courts in Bush v. Gore in 2000, eventually winding up in the conservative majority Supreme Court. Reports of outright voter fraud by former Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida were rampant.
Senior Biden campaign adviser 68-year-old Bob Bauer thinks the expected hubbub over the election won’t happen yet he’s been part of ramping up one the biggest Democrat legal teams in election history. “I think the election will come off [and] I think it will come off successfully,” said Bauer. “We have to separate some of the fact from the fiction here, particularly because I’m concerned that voters are going to be completely bewildered and wonder whether there is an electoral process that they really ought to bother participating in,” Bauer said, worried that voters could get discouraged and not fill in or mail their ballots. Bauer knows that the higher than expected percentage of absentee or mail-in ballots could delay the results, certainly on Election Night. Bauer’s message for the Biden campaign is please vote, no matter what, your votes will be counted somewhere, sometime.
Some states have given voters more time to get there ballots in the mail, some promising to count ballots without postmarks, the only real way to determine if ballots were filled out on time. Bauer talks about Trump changing the election date but doubted that could be done since the date is etched in stone by federal election officials. “For a while, for example, people really wondered, ‘Well, could literally Donald Trump by emergency decree alter the date of the election?’” Bauer thinks that the hoards of election officials around the country can compensate for the unknown of how the U.S. Postal Service will handle what promises to be a flood of ballots. Many of the ballots will come in early, perhaps taking the load off the Post Office. But more than any prior election, collecting and counting mail-in ballots won’t be easy for election officials certainly on Election night.
Bauer thinks that the election can be saved by Civil Society organizations, designed to help supervise the vote. While hope springs eternal, Bauer’s not telling the truth that Democrat and Republican officials are deathly worried about a new experiment in collecting ballots on or before Election Day and a counting the votes accurately. When thousands of ballots were found in dumpsters in West Palm Beach Florida in 2000 Bush v. Gore election, it made a big difference in the outcome. While the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled Dec. 12, 2000 that recounts must stop, it handed the election to Bush. No one knows whether the Nov. 3 election will approximate the closeness of the 2000 election in individual states, there’s enough concern today that both parties have stocked up heavily with attorneys preparing the worst. Despite Bauer’s optimism, there’s no way to control when ballots will be counted.
Trump’s concern about universal mail-in ballots leading to voter fraud can’t be disputed entirely. While voter fraud plays a role in all elections, the percentages are relatively low, even with Bush v. Gore. But if the margins are tight, even a small number of votes not counted or over-counted could change the outcome of the election. Thinking that non-profit organizations or election law attorneys can guarantee collection-and-counting of votes is preposterous. Election officials are all in uncharted territory dealing with universal mail-in ballots. News networks that call individuals states, tallying up the Electoral College votes to that magic number of 270, won’t have an easy time certifying a winner on Election Night or even days, weeks or months after. Even Bauer admits that Democrats are preparing for “contingencies, including of the darker ones,” including Trump refusing to concede.
When you have Democrat Party bosses like 72-year-old former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telling Biden Aug. 26 that “under no circumstances should he concede,” it’s not just Trump looking for answers. Democrat –friendly media wants to blame only Trump for stirring up Election Night controversy. Hillary certainly regrets her 2016 decision to concede to Trump. When you consider she pushed the Steele Dossier for the years since Trump’s inauguration, it’s clear that Hillary actually never did concede. “What I’m always worried about is elevating the rhetorical excesses of Donald Trump. He wants us to believe the election will be chaotic, he wants us to believe there will be rampant fraud, he wants us to believe that it will be illegitimate unless he wins,” Bauer said. But Bauer knows universal mail-in ballots are unprecedented, bound to cause election officials fits.
