In 1992, I was a young political science student who had just run his first campaign with tragic results. We had won the primary but just missed avoiding a runoff.
During that runoff, the other candidates’ voters coalesced against the woman I represented and she lost by the slimmest of margins — eight votes.
The State Senate race she was trying to win encompassed tiny gerrymandered parts of six counties in west-central Oklahoma. We had to come up with $600 per county to demand a recount. After we did it, nothing changed.
That is the result of the vast majority of recounts and that will be the result of the recounts being requested by Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein and supported by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Recounting votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania won’t make any difference. There is no evidence of widespread fraud and mistakes aren’t that common and they are just as likely to deliver more votes for Donald Trump as they are to swing the election another direction.
Trump called the effort to commission recounts a “Green Party scam to fill up their coffers” on Twitter. He’s probably at least partially right.
Stein said every candidate has a right to ask for recounts to make sure elections are fair. That’s at least partially right, as well. The fundraising aspect of the recount is just a little extra green for the Green Party.
But Trump can’t just win and go about his business — not “that business” — the business where he is actually supposed to be preparing to run the country.
He went on a Twitter tirade about the election after feeling challenged by the fact that House Republicans won the popular vote nationwide and he is losing the popular vote count by two million while enjoying a win in the Electoral College.
If the transition is any indication of the way Trump will lead, we’re in for a bumpy ride. Someone really needs to take away his personal Twitter account because he can cause a lot of trouble in 140 characters.
In a moment of braggadocio where he was saying he would have won the popular vote if he needed to, Trump went on to send a tweet that not only seems to justify Stein and Clinton’s recount requests, but supports broader election audits.
“Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California — so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias — big problem!” the President-elect said.
Of course, like most of his claims, Trump has zero evidence to support this. In fact, the only news site to report such fraud is consistently false and conspiracy theory headquarters Infowars.
If you have a crazy uncle on Facebook or Twitter, you know about Infowars and its lead crazy newsman, Alex Jones. Jones has claimed in the past that the government is creating homosexual people, the Air Force caused a tornado in Texas and the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax.
The fact that our President-elect is too busy to receive intelligence briefings from government sources, but is said to be getting updates directly from world leaders and is getting his news from conspiracy clickbait sites raises true concerns.
Even though he is 100 percent wrong, the fact that the President-elect believes there is “serious voter fraud” in at least three states means that either Republicans in those states need to repudiate his claims and assure the country that elections there are fair and properly counted or begin the recount process immediately.
— Kent Bush is publisher of Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star and can be reached at kent.bush@news-star.com.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: KENT BUSH: Recounts reveal that voter fraud isn't a real issue