I hear a lot of my democrat associates saying that they absolutely want "free & fair elections", but that Trump should concede and stop insisting on divisive recounts & legal actions.
The Bad News
Sadly, that option is simply not available. For an election to be fair implies the ability to contest the results, under well defined circumstances and procedures of course.
Here's the important bit: The ability to challenge elections is what makes them fair. You cannot have fair elections if you do not allow dispute resolution as a part of those elections. That's simply not one of the choices. To disallow challenging the results is to guarantee that every instance of election fraud will succeed, ergo not fair. QED, carpe dentum, et. al. sigma cum laude, etc. <-- insert appropriate Latin phrase here.
So, you have to choose, either:
- I am for fair elections, even when this is bothersome, inconvenient and/or threatens a result I like OR
- I am for any election that has the result I want, and fairness be damned.
Sorry - those are the only available choices. There is no "third way".
If any candidate is refused the right to dispute the results and request verification, it is by definition unfair. This is inherent in the system. That's why every state has rules and laws around recounts. That's why the Constitution devotes a lot of Article 3, as well as the entire 12th Amendment, to defining exactly how to handle these situations. And they are not at all uncommon. At the Presidential level they are rare, but there are 100's of local, state and federal elections every year that do not involve the presidency, and almost always there are some races close enough to require recounts, and often allegations of cheating as well. Stacey Abrams comes immediately to mind. (She chose the best of both worlds - to file no official challenge to her 50,000 vote loss, while continuing to claim she had been cheated. The term for this approach is "temper tantrum", and it falls well outside the purvue of election law, so I won't discuss it further here.)
The Good News
Anybody who chooses option #1 above - fair elections - can be reasonably confident they'll get them by just letting all the predefined procedures play out. Patience is all that's required.
If Trump, his lawyers and supporters are actually just whining and blowing smoke, then court cases will be quickly dismissed, or decided against Trump and recounts will change nothing.
On the other hand of course, if Trump's campaign produces evidence of fraud, then the courts will have to adjudicate the fairest available option to deal with it.
The Near Universal Goal
- Count Every Legal Vote Correctly
- Discard Every Illegal Vote
- If anyone is proved commiting fraud in the election, throw them in jail (and don't be gentle about it).
- If anyone is proved to be falsifying evidence of fraud, throw them in the next cell exactly the same way.
- Throw away any keys used in steps #3 & 4
The Exceptions
I personally believe there was malfeasance here, and a lot of it. Whether or not it can be proven, and if proven whether or not it will swing the current leaders, I have no idea. But if I'm right that there were people who chose #2 above, and have cheated - on either side - we need to find them and ruin their lives via a nice long prison sentence. Something drastic enough that tinkering with future elections will be seen as stupider than juggling test tubes full of Nitroglycerin.