A return to objective truths

In the interest of unity I would like to focus on six facts and then offer one opinion that I hope readers will ponder. The facts:

1. President Trump has refused to publicly acknowledge his loss — now 11 days after the fact. No recount in history has ever erased leads the size of those that President-elect Biden holds in any of the states where the vote count was close.

2. President Trump refuses to cooperate with the Biden transition team — still blocking the approval of funds by the GSA that would allow a normal transition and increasing risk to our national security.

3. The 36-day delay in transition for George W. Bush in 2000 was followed by the 9/11 attack in 2001. Was there a connection? The members of the 9/11 Commission thought there may have been (I read their report).

4. Of Trump’s 13 or more legal claims of ballot fraud, only 1 has been substantiated in court; the single case won in PA disqualified a small number of late-arriving mail-in votes that were set aside initially so could not reduce Biden’s 54,000 vote lead there. Further, of three studies I examined that investigated ballot infractions, none found more than a relative handful of legitimate cases — including the well-known heritage.com database which found just over 100 cases since 2015. You are more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to impersonate someone in the voting booth.

5. Three polls released over the past week indicate that 70-82% of Republicans believe the election was not fair, at least double the number that expected fraud prior to Nov. 3rd (I looked at the actual polls).

6. Currently at 247,000+ deaths due to Covid-19, we will undoubtedly pass the 250,000 mark mid-week. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) now projects that deaths will exceed 300,000 by Christmas. Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci revealed Sunday that President Trump hasn’t attended a task force meeting about the virus in ‘months’. And 93% of the 376 counties with the highest per capita number of Covid-19 cases voted overwhelmingly for President Trump.

The opinion: I have to wonder how many people — on both sides, but especially conservatives — would have been up in arms had Hilary Clinton had behaved similarly in 2016 — and despite winning by 3 million plus in the popular vote? I suspect the outrage would be considerable. I also find it odd that Americans are far more suspicious of election results than they were in 2000 — when there was actual reason for the confusion in the Florida count — and despite the considerable efforts to make this the most transparent election in history. Certainly there was some grumbling about the way the Obama administration handled the 2012 H1N1 outbreak which was nothing compared to what we’re experiencing now.

Since Nov. 3, the President has been very vocal about election issues on Twitter. No mention of the 240,000+ people who have now died of coronavirus on his watch, though (155,000+ cases — highest yet; 1,389 deaths added Friday, 11/13).

Part of restoring unity is restoring a sane and mutual sense of what is objectively true.

Paul Mack

Columbus

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.

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