Thursday, August 04, 2022

Connecting the dots

 

I am puzzled as to why I have seen few if any comments on the obvious fact, certainly obvious to me during most of 2020, that Trump was working to subvert our democracy long before he lost the 2020 election.
  Most states that have mail-in ballots do not count them until after the in-person ballots are counted.  Most states announce the results of an election as the counts come in from the many precincts.  They then announce the results of mail-in ballots.  In some cases, mail-in ballots are counted as they come in for a few days, if they were postmarked on time.


  Trump knew he lost the popular vote in 2016, and that his actions and rhetoric had angered, disgusted, and/or scared people, so that he was in danger of losing not only the popular, but also the electoral, vote in 2020, which did happen.  So he sowed doubt about mail-in ballots to his followers, and encouraged them to discount the danger of Covid, so that republicans would be more likely than Democrats to vote in person.


  The director he chose for the post office instituted practices that slowed down the mail for mail-in ballots, so that mail-in ballots were less likely to be received by the election offices by the deadline.


  The easily predictable result was that initial reports on the night of the election, from in-person votes, showed Trump getting a larger percentage than he did later, when mail-in ballots were counted.  As was easily predictable by anyone who has paid attention to the way Trump behaves, he claimed this as evidence that the election was stolen from him, encouraging anger in his followers.


People do remember his words to the Proud Boys gang, to "Stand back and stand by".

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