Not sure about you, but it feels like I’m in Nicaragua or Angola, anyplace but America! The past few days have been so bizarre they’ve shaken the very foundations of my belief that here, in this country, reason, decency and sanity prevail. We are not a banana republic and never have been, but something is going on challenging that belief. Consider –
Its Thu, Nov 5th and there are seven states whose vote tallies are still out: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. This has never happened before in the modern era, defies logic and puts in doubt our entire election process.
It seems many adjustments and modifications were made to the rules governing the process, allowing/encouraging such things as mail-ins, online voting, early-days voting, extended days, postmark deadlines, barring of polling station monitors and unsupervised delivery of huge ballot drops in the early morning hours, to mention a few.
Polling experts and statisticians were at work across the entire mainstream media calling states for either Trump or Biden as soon as they could predict the outcome with a high degree of certainty, using standard deviations and other methods. But there were many examples where one network called a race, while the others took more time, often an extra 1-2 hours.
On the other hand, there were many examples where the results appeared obvious to viewers (Florida) with upwards of 80% of the vote in, the remaining counties all red zones, Trump ahead by 3-4pts but they wouldn’t call it.
During the days leading up to Tuesday many polls were done by many different pollsters, some with close ties/affiliations to Party, some not. Almost all these polls up to election day gave Biden early leads in many states by various margins. Yet when voting was done, Trump was the clear winner. Some went from Biden +5 to Trump +3 which is beyond the margin of error.
Most of the disputed seven states were examples of this, where Trump was ahead all night with substantial leads in some cases, then voting shut down? In Georgia, a water main broke near something which was used to excuse their delay. Others had no excuse or suddenly flipped for Biden like Wisconsin/Michigan.
Oddly, most of these seven states are blue. That is, only blue states had problems; red states were OK except possibly for Arizona which was expected to go red, was called before we knew what was happening and went blue. Which brings Nevada to mind. Expected to be blue and is. Why isn’t it done? Seems there was some expectation it might go red with Biden’s talk of lockdowns, jeopardizing jobs. Strange how a sparsely populated state would have a problem counting votes.
Regarding the ballot dumps mentioned earlier and to be clear, two incidents occurred, that we know of, in two different states involving several hundred thousand votes. They were delivered in the wee small hours of the morning, counted and, strangely again, they were all for Biden. I hope we can agree that to get 300,000+ votes from anywhere and find they’re all for the same candidate is not just strange, its statistically impossible!
Stepping back, Trump was holding his own in the early going with Biden ahead but not by much. Florida would have brought
them neck & neck, then Arizona suddenly went blue. The wind went out of Trump’s sails and he lost momentum, giving the impression Biden was rounding the curve into the stretch, gaining – even though key state Pennsylvania and the rest appeared to be going Trump.
Then it all shut down. State after state began reporting they wouldn’t have their results until Wednesday or later. Not sure how many electoral votes they represented, but obviously each candidate had a path to victory given any combination of wins.
So here we are as a nation, in limbo, not knowing who is our new president, nor how long we’ll have to wait, nor if the process was tainted or manipulated.
With the glaring exception of Bush-Gore 2000, this is unprecedented. It doesn’t feel right on its face, or logical, given the many facts/circumstances discussed above. Not discussed was how Nancy Pelosi declared in briefings the past week Biden had already won based on blue wave projections. If necessary, Trump would be physically removed from the White House, she said!
If I was counseling the president right now about how to proceed I would urge him to announce publicly as many of these details as possible. I’d tell him to explain he is extremely disturbed/concerned about the election process and intends to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.
He should announce the recounts he plans, the methods to be used to insure voting integrity and that he is/will remain the president until this matter has been fully resolved, which may mean through the courts if necessary. He should also allude to the fact that once settled, if he’s re-elected, he will be initiating certain investigations into this matter placing blame where necessary and identifying weaknesses or loopholes in the electing process which require strengthening, correcting or enhancing. Electing a president should be a trustworthy process: a slamdunk! Going forward, nothing less will do.
You’ve Been Reading Shaneview
I’m Al Shane
Leave a Reply