Commentary

In our constitutional republic, the power of the government derives from the consent of the governed. The American people give that consent only once every four years on Election Day. If they have legitimate questions about the integrity of the election—and there is good cause to be gravely concerned about the integrity of the 2020 election—their consent has not been obtained, and the legitimacy of the new government remains an issue until those questions are satisfyingly answered. And there’s no reason they can’t be answered.

Allegations of election fraud have been flying thick and fast. Indeed, hard evidence of voter fraud and the counting of unlawful votes has surfaced in all the battleground states. Joe Biden and the Democrats should be locked arm-in-arm with President Donald Trump to investigate the allegations. After all, the legitimacy of a Biden administration—should he win—depends on satisfactory answers.

If Biden is so sure he won, why would he resist any audits, investigations, or recounts? It’s reasonable for Biden and the Democrats to demand evidence before results are adjusted, but it’s not reasonable for them to do so while also insisting that no investigations or court challenges take place, even as they conceal ballots and evidence needed to substantiate the results they’ve put forward.

When you hear Joe Biden and the Democrats demand proof of “systemic” fraud, bear in mind, the fraud does not have to be systemic, it merely has to affect a small percentage of the total vote to alter the outcome. And voter fraud is not the only concerning issue—votes have to be lawful to be counted. State voting laws must be followed—that means ballots received late or filled out incorrectly must not be counted. In 2000, Al Gore never said the “hanging chad” ballots were “fraudulent”—only that they should not be counted. Republicans did not complain when he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Voters should be keenly aware that Biden, with help from his corrupt friends in the mainstream media, are waging relentless psychological warfare against Trump’s supporters. That’s what the phony polls were all about, why the media called so many swing states early for Biden and late for Trump, and why Twitter, Facebook, and Google all censored stories unfavorable to Biden (e.g., the Hunter Biden laptop stories) and news favorable to the President. Now, they’re up to their old tricks, trying to “declare” Joe Biden the winner while votes are still being counted, recounts are underway, and court challenges have yet to be adjudicated. Don’t let them cheat you out of what we Americans are entitled to—a fair and honest election where all lawful votes, and only the lawful votes, are counted.

Republican lawyers and poll watchers have been systematically shut out of the vote-counting process in key states. Election officials in Democrat-run cities have literally barred doors and covered windows to deny the GOP meaningful access to the counting rooms, in direct violation of state laws.

What are they hiding? It could be the most brazen election theft in American history.

Dead people have voted by the thousands. Out-of-state residents have voted in droves in Nevada.

In Pennsylvania, after the GOP-controlled state legislature refused to adopt Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s suggestion that mail-in ballots be accepted for several days after Election Day, insisting instead that such ballots be mailed out early but be received by 8 pm on Election Day, Wolf went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In a dubious split 4-3 decision, the liberal Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled the Pennsylvania Legislature, allowing ballots to be received until 5 pm on the Friday after Election Day. The U.S. Constitution clearly states that a state’s legislature decides how its electoral votes will be cast, which is why the U.S. Supreme Court has already strongly signaled that these late ballots are unlawful and should not be counted. That, among other reasons, is why Pennsylvania poll workers have denied the president’s poll watchers meaningful access.

Additionally, Pennsylvania’s Democrat secretary of state—with the acquiescence of the Democrat-dominated state Supreme Court—directly violated state election laws by granting last-minute permission for poll workers to help voters correct erroneous ballots, disproportionately affecting urban voters because rural areas lacked the infrastructure to take full advantage of the allowance.

In Wisconsin, the Election Board issued an instruction requiring its poll workers to “cure” mailed ballots missing the address of the required witness, even though state law explicitly requires such ballots to be disregarded. Neither the Wisconsin Election Board, nor the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, can override the Wisconsin Legislature.

In many jurisdictions, Democrat election workers were allowed to “cure” ballots that could not be read by machines because of technical problems, such as voters marking their choice with a check mark instead of filling in the oval. This happens in every election, but state laws require that observers from both parties be able to oversee the process and approve the “cured” ballots. And for good reason: partisan poll workers may be changing the votes in addition to curing those ballots.

In some battleground states including Michigan and Wisconsin, very large “dumps” of ballots all going to Joe Biden were recorded in the wee hours of the morning following Election Day.

Voting machines provided by companies owned by prominent Democrats have experienced “glitches” that would have swung thousands of votes from Trump to Biden had they not been caught by vigilant officials. These machines are in use in about 30 states including every swing state. We have not heard of any “glitches” going other way—in Trump’s favor. We have also learned that Texas rejected these machines and software fearing they could compromise the count. Last, we understand some of these machines were operating with live internet connections, making hacking a possibility, including by foreign agents. The American people are entitled to an audit of the results in states using these machines—a manual recount—to learn if the machines accurately counted the votes.

We know that wealthy liberals such as Mark Zuckerberg financed voter turnout efforts that disproportionately benefited Democrat-leaning areas, including the installation of ballot drop boxes that created unprecedented vulnerabilities in election security.

All of this is unprecedented. None of it is normal. Democrats will respond that we aren’t living in “normal” times—but that’s not an excuse to count the votes of dead people, or out-of-state residents, or ignore the rule of law, or allow partisan officials to alter ballots, or to let partisan operatives harvest mail-in ballots or simply conduct the ballot-counting process in secrecy behind closed doors and blacked-out windows.

Recounts will be conducted in several states, including Wisconsin and Georgia. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona could ultimately undergo the same process. When that happens, it’s vital that the count be conducted in exactly the same manner it was conducted the first time, but without the irregularities that plagued the original count. In other words, we need the full, raw data—including the original copies of ballots that were “cured” without meaningful oversight by Republican observers.

Concealment and uncertainty are the enemies of electoral legitimacy. Without a good-faith effort to verify and validate the results put forward by election officials, there will always be a shadow cast over the results of the 2020 presidential election. Without the consent of the governed, the next administration will have no legitimacy.

There is one reason, and one reason only, for Joe Biden and the corrupt media’s efforts to stymie the efforts to validate the results—they fear the outcome will change. Americans deserve better. If we allow this election to be stolen, we will never again have a fair and honest election.

Jason D. Meister is an Advisory Board Member of Donald J. Trump for President Inc., and frequently appears on national television and radio broadcasts, including various interviews on: Fox News, Fox Business Network, Wall Street Journal Live, Bloomberg, One America News, Sky News, Newsmax TV, Huff Post Live, and Sirius XM.

Stephen B. Meister is a lawyer and an opinion writer. Twitter @StephenMeister. Opinions expressed here are his own, not his firm’s.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author. As a nonpartisan public charity, The Epoch Times does not endorse these statements and takes no position on political candidates

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