Here's Trump saying he hopes the courts won't allow ballots to be counted
Trump said just last month that he wants to ‘get rid of the ballots.’
In Nevada Wednesday, Donald Trump said he hopes that states won’t be permitted to count ballots after Election Day.
“I think on Tuesday we’re gonna over-perform, and we’ll see what happens at the end of the day,” Trump said. “Hopefully, it won’t go longer that. Hopefully, the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after Nov. 3 to count ballots — that won’t be allowed by the various courts, because as you know, we’re in courts on that.”
He added that Republicans had just seen “a big victory” in Wisconsin on the subject, referring to a Supreme Court decision that refused to reinstate a lower court’s ruling to extend Wisconsin mail-in voting deadlines.
It’s not the first time Trump has suggested that not all ballots should be counted. He suggested on Tuesday that it would be “improper” to count ballots after Election Day.
“It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate, and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws,” Trump said.
Last month, a White House reporter asked Trump if “win, lose, or draw,” he would commit to “a peaceful transferral of power after the election.”
Trump responded, “We’ll have to see what happens, you know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
Pressed again to answer, Trump announced that there “won’t be a transfer,” but rather, “a continuation.”
“We want to have — get rid of the ballots,” he said, suggesting that that would be the only way to obtain a peaceful election outcome.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also widely criticized for remarks in his opinion in the Wisconsin case suggesting absentee and mail-in ballots shouldn’t be counted after Nov. 3.
He wrote that “states want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”
Kavanaugh also added that “states also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter.”
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke out to debunk this in a public statement.
“In America, we count the votes to determine who wins an election,” the statement said. “Despite the incorrect assertions from President Trump and Justice Kavanaugh, election officials across the country accept ballots well after Election Day every year, and results are not certified until the votes are counted and a canvas to confirm the results is conducted. Absentee ballots counted after election day do not ‘flip the results of an election,’ as Justice Kavanaugh claimed. They are the results of the election.”
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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