Thursday, December 01, 2016

Beat By A Girl

At last! Something upon which Donald Trump and I can agree: There was massive fraud perpetrated during the 2016 Presidential Election. How else are we to explain the results? Except for the fact that Ethel Merman's forgotten son and I are probably viewing things from opposite sides of the fence. Or wall, if you prefer.
It was around ten o'clock on November 8 that I first started wondering about the number of votes cast for various candidates and the multitudes of paper turning into digits on TV screens across America. The phrase "early returns" still rings in my ears as I wondered how fast and accurate all of that ballot counting could possibly be done overnight. I could understand how the box that was busy keeping track of votes in the hallway at my elementary school could easily be rolled into whatever port that was open for dissemination of all the ballots cast by all the folks in our precinct. That would be around eight thirty or nine o'clock at night. Where were these "early returns" coming from? Maybe from exit polls. Who wouldn't feel good about shouting out to any microphone shoved in your face after you have just completed doing your democratic duty, "I voted for..." They might have been talking about me, since I voted by mail weeks before Election Day.
But telling me who the next President of the United States will be before all the votes have been counted? That sounds like a scam to me. It does to Donald Trump, too, but for other reasons. The presumptive winner of the 2016 presidential election is now tweeting that, "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!" Feel free to file this under Mister Trump's plan to "bring the country together." This is coming from the guy who won, by most accounts. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate is asking for a recount in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Is anybody keeping track of all this?
Yes, there are still those who hold out hope that a petition to change the votes of those in the Electoral College or massive swings in the results of any of the six states mentioned above will somehow alter the destiny which we are all currently facing. Jill Stein has raised seven million dollars to help fund the recount effort. The billionaire who won and is pointing without facts to back himself up at voter fraud has done nothing but tweet his accusations from the relative safety of the winner's circle. 
We've been down this path before, people. The winner of the presidential election may not be the one with the most popular votes, and vice versa. "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Could it be that he just doesn't understand the problem here? 

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