Forget all the bogus claims of voting fraud since the 2020 national elections, and the January run-off races to fill Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats.
Former President Donald Trump was not chased from office through chicanery in the election process. Republicans did not lose control of the U.S. Senate because of voting irregularities, dishonest voting machines, or any other nefarious schemes at the polls.
The outcomes from those recent elections were due simply to the will of the record number of Americans who voted, exercising their Constitutional right to choose this nation’s leaders.
Voters wanted change and they got it. Simple as that.
Even former U.S. Attorney General William Barr — who made it his job to protect President Trump’s political and legal flanks — declared that the Justice Department had investigated and found no evidence of widespread fraud. Nothing that could’ve changed the outcomes of the elections.
Here’s the truth: The real “voter fraud” has been the willfully dishonest and loud outcries of fraud (STOP THE STEAL) made by many Republican senators, representatives, others party leaders, and conservative media commentators, who know their claims are lies. But, who also have learned from experience, and from their former mentor and leader, Donald Trump, that there is money to be made, popularity, ratings and power to be had by keeping the populace divided — liberals, conservatives and moderates — at one another’s throats.
Let me say that again, simply: The real voting fraud has been the continued claims of election fraud, by those who know their claims are not true, but figure they and the Republican Party can benefit from the Big Lie.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were duly elected to lead this country for the next four years as President and Vice President. In Georgia, businessman, John Ossoff, and Baptist minister, Ralphael Warnock, are the state’s duly elected and legally seated U.S. Senators.
The Big Lie about the elections is already proving it has the power to wreak havoc on the rights of thousands, perhaps millions, of the nation’s voters, particularly those who are black or brown, or members of other minority groups, who only lately have been able to take advantage of earlier voting-law changes that made it easier for them to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.
Georgia is one of more than 40 states currently working on changes to voting laws and regulations, whose endgame will almost certainly be restrictions on absentee ballets and voting. Measures being discussed include, but are not limited to: who can qualify for absentee ballots; enhanced ID requirements for ballets; the number and placement of absentee ballot drop boxes; the number of days of early voting, and eliminating some weekend days from the list.
Event though the recent elections proved the value of making voting in this country easier, rather than more difficult, Republicans in State Houses across the country are moving toward more voting restrictions, anyway. Many of them say it is because they feel the need to reassure voters in their states that elections are safe and the results can be trusted.
Such reassurance can be easily accomplished, if those politicians around the country would simply tell their constituents the truth: That there was no voter fraud, that the elections in their communities were safe, and the results were accurate.
Unfortunately, honesty is not the route they are willing to take. And they would surely find it even more difficult to follow that path, because they have spent all these weeks and months lying as if there was no tomorrow. They like their lie, and they’re sticking to it.
Why? Because they didn’t like the results of the last election. In their minds, an election is only valid, if their side wins.