My Mail-in Ballot Is Just as Valid as Your Walk-in Vote

I did it early and by mail. It is NOT an “illegal” vote

Trump voters are demanding state vote counters to “Count the Vote!” or “Stop the Vote!” But be careful. Like a surgeon's needle, these requests need to be applied strategically. Are we in Arizona? Keep counting. In Pennsylvania? Stop! This shows no consistency and more than a little hypocrisy on the part of the protesting Trump voters.

And even though one candidate has 73,919,527 votes (50.5%) against an incumbent who has 69,801,772 votes (47.7%) so far; Trump voters, egged on by the President of the United States, are insisting that the election is being stolen.

It is, as Senator Susan Collins would typically say, very disturbing. Our very own president is trying to trash our voting system; this is the very heart of our democracy. Millions upon millions of us knew that putting him in the White House was a risk, but none of us thought it would be this bad. It’s more than bad.

It’s actually quite dreadful.

And yes, the electoral college is the key to establish who the president will be. However, it needs to be abolished. It has perverted the will of the people more than a few times.

But putting that aside, the strategy of the White House and Republican statehouses all over the nation in the election of 2020 becomes clearer. These processes are now a legacy of the Republican Party. They have been outed.

Their methods will be revealed to future scholars of history. The only reason it failed in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania is because it was harder to execute when the eyes of the nation and the world were laser-focused on them.

They thought they were Machiavelli

How proud they must have been. They were going to perpetuate confusion and false narratives all by themselves right under our noses. And of course, we would all be too stupid to figure it out.

First, they prevented those states from counting mail-in ballots and absentee (they’re not necessarily the same) AND early votes until November 3rd. The Biden campaign, due to the pandemic, encouraged any and all voters to use those methods. Local Republican leaders knew this.

That meant the Secretary of State(s) had to first handle the standard voting public votes on that day, and only then could they turn to count the remaining votes which are just as valid. I myself used a mail-in ballot in my state and took care to ensure that it was counted.

Keep in mind too, that plenty of Democrats voted on November 3rd. They all didn’t vote by mail.

Secondly, at the end of the first day, the incumbent had a comfortable lead. He should have — that is likely to happen when only part of the votes had been counted.

As the mail-in, and absentee ballots (even military!) and early votes were added, the President and these Republicans began to refer to them as “illegal or late votes.”

The originators of this scheme (did they go to Harvard? Stanford? Michigan State? Or am I being “elitist?”) were quivering in excitement.

The President’s lead dwindled as expected, and some of the G.O.P. began throwing out vague comments about the need to ensure that there was no fraud. Others went in wholeheartedly.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House (1995–1999) went so far as to say that the Attorney General should arrest poll workers for counting the votes:

Others complained about the slow pace of the count, all the while knowing that by not allowing the state administrations to count the mail-in, absentee (and military), early votes until November 3rd, AND by constraining their processing labor resources (money), they themselves had made it impossible to deliver results any time soon.

On Wednesday, the Republican leader of the Pennsylvania state Senate held a press conference at which he called on the Democratic secretary of state to resign because of how long the vote count was taking.

What did Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar do them? Nothing. They just needed a fall guy for their confederacy of dunces.

They wanted to slow-walk the count without seeming to do so. It was taking too long, they whined as they blamed the delay on the head vote counter. That’s when millions began to pay attention.

“I sent in a mail-in ballot,” they said to themselves. “Now, you want to stop counting?”

If the states had been able to process votes like Florida, all of this would’ve been a done deal. The election would’ve been wrapped up on the evening of November 3rd.

The short window to process mail-in ballots in states such Pennsylvania and Michigan stands in sharp contrast to Florida, where officials began processing ballots weeks before Election Day, allowing them to swiftly report results.

But remember, the Republican statehouses in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania wouldn’t let them count the mail-in ballots as they arrived in the weeks before the election.

The shifting count angered the President.”They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan,” he tweeted Wednesday “So bad for our Country!”

What was bad about counting the mail-in votes?

Thirdly, the Republicans tried to disenfranchise those same votes, either by implying that they were fake or too late to be counted. They figured we’d get tired of the count and just stop. We wouldn’t be able to handle the stress…

Would we develop vote-counting fatigue? It’s not a condition, I know, but somebody will invent it, so why not me?

However, there were some differences that made the situation even more volatile. For example, in Pennsylvania, the law (a Supreme Court decision) states they can receive ballots up to three days after November 3rd. In this case, they can still be received by Friday, November 6 at 6 pm. Trump was apoplectic. (If you haven’t noticed, this is my new favorite word.)

But right now they’re still counting the votes they already have.

Sometimes, orchestrated situations become obvious

However, they did not realize that the world was observing and understanding their techniques. It wasn’t working with the majority of the voters — nor did it work with the media. It began to go down like the Hunter Biden/Giuliani laptop scandal (or not). Because just like the laptop, the “delay” was orchestrated.

But the President didn’t understand. He really didn’t seem to grasp that these were real votes from real people. Americans. And they weren’t voting for him.

Any state that didn’t vote for President Donald J. Trump is corrupt. Any vote that didn’t vote for him is fake. It sounds like an SNL skit, but it's not.

But lets’ be real. The president was really only the leader of what he called the “red” states. He had enduring problems with the states who didn’t vote for him, tried to attack their funding and priorities, so he might as well move on. That would not have changed if he wins a second term.

We need a president for all of the states; which is the United States of America.

This behavior is so like the ethos of the dictators that he loves so well, like Putin of Russia, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey. The relationships that he tries so hard to cultivate should have told America something very lethal about Donald J. Trump.

“When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.” ~Japanese Proverb

So would it be out of character for President Trump to ignore millions of American voters-the ones who didn’t vote for him? It’s not out of scope for someone who admires dictators. Kim Jong-un gets 100% of the vote in his country!

He must be a wonderful leader.

I said all of that to say this: My mail-in ballot is just as valid as your walk-in vote.

And you nor anybody else will make it illegal.

Nice try.