Democracy at stake
Each presidential candidate is desperate to win on Nov. 3, but Trump might go the extra length to win
At the Macomb Township Recreation Center, Americans drop off their early vote for the unique presidential election going on during a pandemic. With so many absentee ballots, which will take time after the election to count, President Donald Trump stated he will declare an early victory to the presidential election on election day. “I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election,” Trump said according to Axios.
Mail-in voting provides a great way to keep people safe during the pandemic, but it’s causing a lot of problems for the 2020 presidential election.
Since so many voters chose to mail in their ballots, the ballots will take much longer to count, according to Axios. Each state set different deadlines for mail-in ballots; therefore, no set date exists for the election results. It could take weeks before the country knows who won the election and the republican party plans to use this to their advantage. With this new format for voting, many problems are arising with officials trying to steal the election, but every vote must count.
On Oct. 27, President Donald Trump stated he plans to declare the 2020 presidential victory if it looks like he is ahead in votes on election day, according to Axios. This unacceptable behavior from the leader of a democratic nation shouldn’t be tolerated by the American people.
If Trump stays true to his word and declares a premature victory, then the ballots that come in after election day could be used as a claim to election fraud by Trump’s team of lawyers. Even though the claim is false due to laws put in place by states allowing votes to be counted after election day, there is a conservative majority in the supreme court that might side with Trump. The American people need to start paying more attention to their government officials because they are finding the flaws in the system to gain more power against the will of the people, and Trump is desperate to win.
Even if this isn’t Trump’s plan, a premature declaration of victory will anger the people. If the final tally of votes after election day declares Joe Biden as the winner, Trump supporters won’t accept the results and cause chaos. On the other hand, if Trump is the clear winner, Biden supporters won’t accept the results because they will think the election ended early and not all of the votes counted.
The president of the United States shouldn’t be able to claim a victory early because America is a democratic republic where the people hold the most power, not the president. All of the votes must be counted before either candidate claims victory.
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