Before Declaring a Victor, Investigate Allegations of Fraud

The ballot counting room inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Pa., on Nov. 6, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Commentary

I should like to begin by offering Donald Trump some prophylactic advice.

Whether he continues as president for another two and a bit months or until Jan. 20, 2024, he has to be concerned about the future of his legacy, especially all the good he is bringing about through his executive orders.

I think, for example, of his recent executive order banning the teaching of the toxic ideology of critical race theory in federal agencies. What a good idea that was!

Ditto his order instituting a “1776 Commission” to teach the true story of America’s founding and guiding principles in our schools.

The problem with executive orders is that they can be superseded as quickly as they can be issued.

If the worst happens and the country is saddled with President Kamala Harris, aided, at the beginning, anyway, by that old guy gibbering behind a mask beside her, then much that President Trump has accomplished will be in jeopardy.

Therefore, I suggest that he take a page from Julius Caesar. In 59 BC, when Caesar was Consul (i.e., before his adventures in Gaul), Caesar promulgated a good deal of populist legislation, including the “lex agraria,” which provided land for Pompey’s returning veterans.

Knowing that the next consul could undo what he had done, Caesar took the precaution of attaching what has been called a “curse clause” to the oath of office.

Here’s how it worked. Henceforth, when politicians took the oath of office, they would have to swear solemnly that they would not undo Caesar’s edict. Otherwise they would be cursed. The Romans took their oaths seriously, so it probably did some good.

I suggest that President Trump consider some similar expedient.

I understand that Democrats, as a tribe, no longer take oaths very seriously. But there is something to be said for having them publicly affirm things that they intend to repudiate. The contrast between promise and performance would be salutary.

Meanwhile, of course, all eyes are on the fate of the 2020 election.

Premature Celebrations

Some Democrats, having been told by The Washington Post, CNN, and kindred organs of wokeness that Joe Biden won the election, have been hailing him Imperator and encouraging others to do likewise.

The egregious Jake Tapper said that Republicans who supported President Trump were “acting like babies” for not congratulating Biden on winning the election.

Memo to Jake: Joe Biden has not won the election. It doesn’t matter what CNN or the other left-wing media mascots say.

They do not get to decide who is president. The electors do, and they have not spoken.

Back in 2000, Al Gore took 37 days in Court as the votes in Florida were scrutinized.

This year, there are widespread reported voting irregularities (that’s a six-syllable word for “fraud”) in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Arizona.

The media is jumping up and down trying to deny this (watch Dem apparatchik George Stephanopoulos try out that assertion on South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem: she crushes him).

Evidence

Since the media is screaming that there was “no widespread voter fraud,” I thought it might be useful to review a little bit of the evidence that there is, in fact, serious reason to be concerned about the integrity of the 2020 election.

The evidence is of several kinds and is still mounting and will continue to mount as President Trump pursues his cases in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and elsewhere.

Some of the evidence comes from whistleblowers, for example the postal employee who declared publicly that workers were given ballots that came in on Nov. 4 and ordered to stamp them as having arrived Nov. 3.

Some of the evidence is visual fishiness, like the video of a chap surreptitiously delivering box of ballots, with no apparent oversight, to a counting center in the middle of the night.

Then there were all the surprising late night vote dumps in battleground cities. They were overwhelmingly for Biden—sometimes, as in the case of a tranche of 23,377 ballots in Pennsylvania—they were all for Biden. Even those innocent of statistics should raise an eyebrow at that. 23,377 ballots: all for one candidate. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

There was also the computer “glitch” in a county in Michigan that mistakenly credited 6000 votes meant for Republicans to Democrats.

When the “mistake” was corrected, the county changed from blue to red. Forty-seven other counties in Michigan deployed that same software. Are their vote tallies being checked?

An Auditor’s Red Flags

A former auditor named Larry Correia has enumerated a list of some of the “red flags” the election of 2020 has raised.

Just as in a financial audit, a handful of anomalies may be evidence merely of carelessness or innocent oddity.

But the more anomalies, the more likely it is that fraud, not inattention or innocent anomaly, is the culprit.

Correia begins by noting, as have several commentators, that the voter turn out in battleground cities was surprisingly, indeed off-the-charts high.

Was such “third-world dictatorship level turnout” evidence of laudable attention to civic duty in these places? Or was something more questionable afoot?

Correia goes on to note “the statistically impossible breakdown of the ratios of these vote dumps”—another red flag.

He continues:

“The ratios of these dumps being far better than the percentages in the bluest of blue cities, even though the historical data does not match, red flag.

“The ratios of these vote dumps favoring Biden more in these few battlegrounds than the ratio for the rest of the country (even the bluest of the blue), red flag.

“Biden outperforming Obama among these few urban vote dumps, even though Trump picked up points in every demographic group in the rest of the country, red flag.

“The poll observers being removed. Red flag.

“The counters cheering as GOP observers are removed, red flag.

“The fact that the Dem observers outnumber the GOP observers 3 to 1, red flag (and basis of the first lawsuit filed)

“The electioneering at the polls (on video), red flag.

“The willful violation of the court order requiring the separation of ballots by type, red flag.”

Perhaps none of these suspicious anomalies is, by itself, dispositive.

But taken together, they are at very least troubling, as are other statistic anomalies, such as the way Biden’s performance in certain battleground cities violates Benford’s Law, a statistical test widely used to uncover fraud in elections, financial records, and other supposedly random aggregations of numerical data.

Then there are the allegations, which have just surfaced in the last few days, that Biden’s performance was the beneficiary of covert interference of data manipulation software.

As of this writing, that spectacular claim is merely asserted, not proved. But it has the backing of several credible witnesses, including the attorney Sidney Powell and retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney.

Disingenuous Claims

My main point is this. There is an abundance of evidence suggesting fraudulent activity in the 2020 election. Perhaps none of it will pan out. But it deserves to be investigated.

In the meantime, claims that Joe Biden won the election are not just premature, they are insulting and disingenuous.

Moreover, they are part of that monolithic anti-Trump narrative that has poisoned the atmosphere of our civic life for four years and contributed mightily to the toxic divisiveness that has been blamed on President Trump but of which, in fact, he has mostly been the victim, not the perpetrator.

In 270 AD, the emperor Aurelian ascended to the purple. For five glorious years, he labored tirelessly and effectively for the people of Rome.

He restored order and prosperity to the empire. He all but ended the crisis of the third century that threatened to tear the Empire apart.

His magnificent walls, portions of which are still visible, protected Rome from marauding barbarians for more than a century.

In the end, he was murdered because a treacherous bureaucrat fabricated evidence against him. His corpse wasn’t cold before those responsible recoiled in horror. What had they done? Aurelian was hailed as “Restitutor Orbis,” the restorer of the world. What followed was not pretty.

Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is “Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.