America’s Moment of Truth – Admitting Our Electoral Process is Broken and What We Do Next

By: Rick Gates

Many Americans needed a reprieve from non-stop election coverage leading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Certainly, the pace and amount of news focusing on the election has exhausted everyone all around. Re-tuning in this week after pausing a few days to express thankfulness confirmed what many had hoped. No breaking news alerts. Nothing was missed.

Now the election grind accelerates once again, and the constitutional clock continues to count down the remaining days until the 2020 presidential contest is finalized. This election has exposed the tragic flaws in our electoral process that we have ignored for far too long. Americans across the country are struggling daily to reconcile what happened and what to believe. We are at a profound inflection point where the incontrovertible truth will hurt our nation but must be acknowledged to heal it. Election fraud happened. In fact, it has been happening for decades.

Each day since November 3rd has brought rise to allegations of election fraud from the absurd to the provable. In multiple states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin specific and clear occurrences of fraudulent activity have been disclosed by witnesses with direct knowledge or involvement. Deceased people casted ballots. Double voting occurred. Election observers were prevented from observing. Voters cast ballots in jurisdictions where they no longer reside. Ballots were submitted late but still counted.

Signatures on mail-in and absentee ballots were missing, illegible, or in many cases unverified. Voters specifically stating they did not vote were told they voted. Massive amounts of extra mail-in ballots were printed in states. Ballots went missing. Several states stopped counting ballots during the night and compromised the voting process. Election officials in Georgia actually admitted that “illegal voting is going to happen.” The list of fraudulent occurrences goes on and on.

The desire and necessity to look past electoral fraud is understandable. No one working or volunteering in an election wants to admit deliberate irregularities occurred. The very notion is tantamount to professing failure, which then leads to consequences and repercussions. It undercuts our voice. The privacy of the individual vote conjoined with the veritable transparency of the election process is the foundation of our democracy. Without these principles, and the unreserved ability of every American to believe they are incorruptible, every value used to unite our states will dissolve them and usher in tyranny.

Most of Joe Biden’s supporters, and many inside our own federal and state government agencies claim that systemic or massive fraud did not occur and therefore had no consequential impact on the overall election result. Recently, Attorney General Bill Barr stated, “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” All of these claims are problematic and expose the true heart of the matter.

As a nation many Americans cannot and will not accept the undeniable fact that fraud occurred and impacted the outcome of the presidential election. Sadly, trying to qualify the definition of fraud by requiring a threshold of potency does not cure the damaging impact. Fraud is fraud. Whether it is ten votes or ten million votes it is intolerable and dismantles the legitimacy of the election result.

Whether the outcome of the presidential election ultimately selects Donald Trump or Joe Biden, why would either candidate, or the voters, accept a tainted result plagued by at least half the country believing the victory is illegitimate. President Trump confronted this very scenario after his opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, viciously maligned the result and questioned Trump’s legitimacy.

The consequences of Clinton’s actions adversely impacted our country globally, but more gravely imperiled our democratic foundation. In the current election the pervasiveness of election duplicity has poisoned the result to an alarming extent. Recent polls not only show a majority of Republicans believe election fraud transpired but also that 28% of Democrats agree fraud in the election aided Biden. The acknowledgement is both staggering and dangerous.

It is no longer just about winning or losing the race but the way in which it is done. Refusing to recognize the chicanery in the 2020 election impedes us as a country from restoring the transparency, integrity and validity of the election outcome. Without these revered values our elections are discredited, and our democracy doomed. Our Founding Fathers were thoughtful in constructing our constitutional republic. They understood the resilience of our new nation at its inception but also that pivotal moments would test and transform it.

Until we accept that our electoral process is broken and admit to our past failures in repairing it, we cannot begin the restorative work needed to rebuild trust in it. We need to identify and investigate all allegations of election fraud honestly, question witnesses thoroughly, challenge discrepancies and violations legally, and pursue the facts without fear of where they ultimately lead. Time should never be the barrier to finding the truth. In the end, all Americans want to accept and embrace the election result without reservation. We deserve nothing less.

Rick Gates served as the deputy campaign chairman for President Trump in 2016. He is the author of “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story to How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost.”

             (Twitter @rickwgates).