It's time for Trump to concede and move on
by Washington Examiner, |
| November 20, 2020 04:15 PM
When President Trump refused to concede the election to Joe Biden in the immediate aftermath of Nov. 3, we argued that he had the right to mount legal challenges if he believed there had been irregularities, mistakes, fraud, or all three. Democratic objections and outrage were as hypocritical as they were inevitable, coming as they did from a corps that refused to accept the 2016 election result not for days, weeks, or even months, but for four years.
But although fair-minded people know there are legitimate procedures for litigation, and that these should be allowed to play out, there is also wisdom in the phrase “put up or shut up.†If you are going to mount legal challenges and allege on national television that there has been massive and systematic election fraud, you had better provide evidence in addition to assertion. Trump’s legal team has not done that.
When more than 150 million voters participate in an election in 50 states that, in our federal system, decide their own rules for balloting and vote counting, there are bound to be irregularities and mistakes, even if there isn’t fraud. And, contrary to what Democrats repeatedly say, there have been plenty of well-documented cases of fraud in elections over the years. Doubtless, there was some of it this year, too.
But not remotely enough to change the result. The vast spread of American democracy, which makes error and malfeasance inevitable, also makes it plain that neither of these regrettable concomitants of mass voting robbed Trump of victory. No fraud or error produced tens of thousands of additional votes for Biden in battleground states.
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