A county election worker loads a ballot counting machine at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020.
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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To everyone who had a hand in conducting the 2020 election, thank you and bless you. Under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, you showed us exactly what American pride and patriotism look like.
But even more so, being involved this year took courage. Between the pandemic, threats of violence at voting centers and a president who continues to stoke intimidation against election workers, the actions of those involved in protecting Americans’ right to vote are unforgettable.
Our hats are off to all who took part: the volunteers who helped voters cast their ballots at voting centers, the election staff teams who designed and implemented pandemic safety protocols at polling places, the election officials like Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria who continue to work diligently to ensure every vote is counted, and more.
Their hard work and commitment to democracy helped foster this year’s epic turnout, with the count at 148 million as of early this week. That translated to 62% of the voting-age population, a level that hasn’t been reached since 1968. And ballots are still being counted in Nevada and elsewhere.
Americans needed the voting volunteers and officials to deliver, and they did.
A worthy American president would praise them. But instead, President Donald Trump is attacking them with his baseless legal claims of widespread voter fraud and by spurring his angry supporters to show up at vote-counting centers to spew hostility toward those conducting the ongoing counts.
That’s appalling, even by Trump’s low standards.
Trump isn’t just disparaging some faceless elections apparatus with his behavior, he’s insulting every single person involved by suggesting they were either inept in their work or were complicit in a scheme to elect Joe Biden over him. It’s an outrageously false claim — as shown by judges in Nevada and elsewhere quickly rejecting Trump’s lawsuits — and it’s infuriating that Trump is smearing so many patriotic Americans with it.
This is America at its best, people across the nation and all walks of life willing to commit to help everyone vote. They’re Americans one and all, and they come from across the spectrum of political stances.
Not only that, but the results of their work are verified by officials representing both parties.
Do bad ballots get through? Yes, but vanishingly few. The idea that such a large and diverse group of election workers would cook a vote for anybody is preposterous on its face and particularly loathsome given Trump’s overt efforts to suppress the vote. Remember his effort to slow or halt mail-in ballots from being delivered to disenfranchise voters through the U.S. Postal Service?
Trump and other extremist Republicans see voter engagement and cry that it must be voter fraud. No, it isn’t fraud, it’s passion at the polls. Democracy won, demagoguery lost.
Reportedly, though, members of Trump’s inner circle have soured on his snowflake strategy of imaginary voter fraud and are asking him to concede the race.
Even former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, an extremist Republican himself and a Trump ally, dismissed the possibility that Trump would prompt a swing with his request for a recall in that state.
“After recount in 2011 race for WI Supreme Court, there was a swing of 300 votes,” Walker tweeted. “After recount in 2016 Presidential race in WI, @realDonaldTrump numbers went up by 131. As I said, 20,000 is a high hurdle.”
Yet in some places, Trump’s supporters are showing up with guns and chanting that election workers should be arrested.
This endgame will go down as another black mark in Trump’s legacy, which is filled with them.
We’re proud of our election staffers and volunteers. To them we say good job, and keep up the important work of completing and authenticating the counts. What you’re doing is deeply appreciated and highly inspirational.
