On Wednesday, November 4, I woke up at 4 a.m. and was quite happy. Not only did President Trump win Florida, he was on the verge of winning Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina with the majority of votes counted. In previous elections, most media outlets would have called these states then and there in favor of President Trump. But like everything else in 2020, nothing is straightforward or like it used to be. COVID-19 has invaded every aspect of our lives. The President had warned about this election over and over again. I am not sure the boards of elections in many states were listening.
Later in the day, both Wisconsin and Michigan flipped to former Vice President Joe Biden. I was informed at noon that Wisconsin reported a 101% voter turnout (3,129,000 registered voters with 3,170,206 counted). That suggests that the same voter voted more than once. In 2016, Wisconsin also had voter irregularities and Donald Trump was awarded close to another 1,000 votes that had either not been counted or were blocked in some way.
In Michigan, 105% of registered voters voted (5,453,000 registered voters, 5,736,581 actually voted).
In a ballot “dump,” or an act of ballot “harvesting,” the Board of Elections of Michigan found a trove of 138,339 votes, and all of those votes somehow went to Joe Biden.
This is highly irregular. It is precisely what President Trump warned would happen with mail-in ballots. The President tweeted before the election in reference to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Pennsylvania’s State Supreme Court allowing ballots to be counted for three days after the election, that the decision “is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating.”
The President has been proven right. It reminds me of elections in third-world countries. It represents the great American election heist of 2020 (I say this even though the final outcome of this election is up in the air).
This is not sour grapes. America remains the greatest democracy in the world. Voting is indeed a sacred right. This election, which was dramatically impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, left much room for rampant corruption. Unlike states like Florida and Ohio, which already had sophisticated mail-in voting systems, the other battleground states did not. It has led to all of the questions being raised by the Trump campaign about voter fraud, corruption, and cheating. It should never have happened to begin with, but failure by the States to act properly and efficiently has led to an unacceptable situation.
If America wants to remain the great democracy that it is, it better fix a very broke system that has called this election into serious question. The rest of the world is watching. This is not a partisan issue. Voting is the life and blood of America. It should never be tampered with.
Joseph M. Frager is a physician and lifelong activist.