Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and President-elect Joe Biden finally declared victory Nov. 7
in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)
What a year. We have seen pandemics before; we have seen social upheaval, and we have seen contentious elections.
But all at once? Not in recent memory.
So how, in a year like this, how do you choose a single “biggest story of the year”? You don’t, of course. Because all of these stories played into and off of each other as the days turned into months. In truth, all these things swirled together to create a volatile mix that continues to fuel a powder keg of a year that might still explode before all is said and done.
This week, Dallas Voice recaps what we see as the top stories from a national perspective: the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, the Black Lives Matter movement and social justice causes and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County ruling.
Next week, as we kick off what we all most sincerely hope will be a much better new year, David Taffet will recap our top local news stories.
Tammye Nash
The 2020 Election
There was never any question that Donald Trump would be running for re-election in 2020, and few if any questions that the GOP leadership would continue to support him. But the field of Democratic was, well, crowded to say the least. Among them was the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg, the first openly LGBTQ candidate to mount a viable campaign for president and the first LGBTQ candidate to qualify for the Democratic debates.
the time 2020 began, that field had narrowed to 15, still including “Mayor Pete,” but he dropped out on March 1, just before the Texas Primary on March 3, and backed Biden.
That left just five Democrats still in the race, including former Vice President Joe Biden who had been struggling to get any traction early on. But he won the South Carolina primary by a landslide on Feb. 29 and rode that momentum in a tremendous showing on Super Tuesday.
Of the 14 state primaries held on March 3, Biden won 10, practically guaranteeing he would win the nomination. All the others but one dropped out soon after. And at the DNC in August, Biden made history when he chose California Sen. Kamala Harris, herself a former 2020 presidential candidate, as his running mate — the first woman, the first person of Asian descent and the first person of African-American descent to claim that honor.
Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 epidemic played a starring role in the campaign; he continued his rallies and refused to wear a mask, constantly ignoring or even countermanding the advice and warnings of his own public health experts. Biden, though, kept his campaign events small; he and Harris always wore their masks and were careful to follow all CDC protocols.
Trump had — and still has — fervent supporters in the LGBTQ community. Richard Grenell, the gay man Trump appointed first as ambassador to Germany and early this year named acting director of U.S. national intelligence (making him the first LGBTQ person to hold a cabinet-level position), promised the community at a Florida rally in October that Trump is “100 percent with us.”
But most LGBTQ people disagreed. According to a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation poll, more than 81 percent of LGBTQ people favored Biden in the election, with 14 percent supporting Trump. Of that 14 percent, most seemed to focus more on what they saw as economic and fiscal issues rather than issues of equality.
The one thing everyone will remember about the 2020 presidential election is how long it dragged on even after all the votes were counted. By the time people started waking up on Wednesday morning, the outcome of the election was still far from clear. Over the next three-plus days, as mail-in and absentee ballots in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia were counted, those states went from red to pink to baby blue to solid blue. And finally, on Saturday, Nov. 7, Biden and Harris claimed their historic victory. When all was said and done, after record turnout, Biden had won the popular vote 81,283,485 to 74,223,744,
Even then, Trump and his team refused to concede, filing lawsuits, demanding recounts and sowing seeds of doubt in the democratic process by continuing to push their false narrative of fraud and a “rigged election.”
I loved reading this article. I want to list a few facts why most Americans feel this election was anything but honest.
Thousands of poll watchers have given sworn affidavits to the fraud they witnessed, as well as those captured on video.
Here are facts as to why most Americans feel this election may be stolen:
FACT:
DETROIT MICHIGAN: A Republican Poll Watcher from Detroit, MI. In her own sworn affidavit of what she witnessed.
6. At approximately 4:30 a.m. I thought everyone was going to go home as our shift had ended.
7. There were two men in charge of the counting, one in his 30s and one in his 50s.
8. At approximately 4:30 a.m., on November 4, 2020, the man in his 50s got on the microphone and stated that another shipment of absentees would be arriving and would have to be counted. (this is past the Nov.3 deadline, which all votes needed to be counted.)
9. I heard other challengers say that several vehicles with out-of-state license plates pulled up to the TCF Center a little before 4:30 a.m. and unloaded boxes of ballots.
10. At approximately 4:30 a.m., tens of thousands of ballots were brought in and placed on eight long tables. Unlike the other ballots, these boxes were brought in from the rear of the room.
11. The same procedure was performed on the ballots that arrived at approximately 4:30 a.m., but “I specifically noticed that every ballot I observed was cast for Joe Biden.” A coincidence? No, it was a part of an orchestrated effort to ensure Biden would ‘steal’ this election.
12. While counting these new ballots, I heard counters say at least five or six times that all five or six ballots were for Joe Biden. All ballot sampled that I heard and observed were for Joe Biden.
FACT:
Poll Watchers (both Democrat and Republican) saw batches of ballots, 60% had SAME the signature, saw ballot batches scanned 5 times, saw 50 ballots fed many times into a scanner, A Jan. 1, 1900, ballot was recorded in a poll book as DOB for many not in poll books so they could count ballots, 35 ballots counted even though not connected to voter record, poll workers marking ballot with no mark for candidates, saw ballots counted with no signature or postmark, VOTER said deceased son was recorded as voting twice, saw provisional ballots placed in tabulation box, PASSENGERS dropped off more ballots than people in car, ballots received after election were being pre-dated, failed software that caused error in Antrim County used in Wayne County, GOP challengers were not re-admitted but Dems were, GOP challengers forced to stay away while Dems were not, GOP challengers physically pushed from counting tables by officials, GOP challengers subjected to racial harassment (many of them white males, according to several poll watchers), DEM challengers gave out packet: “Tactics to Distract GOP Challengers”, Election officials covered windows so challengers couldn’t observe counting, Election officials cheered when GOP challenger ejected, GOP challenges to suspect ballots ignored, Challengers barred from observing ballot duplication process
Fact:
I would ask readers to look at this video. It clearly shows a Poll Watcher being denied access at one Philly polling station.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1323615834455994373
The Trump campaign’s national Election Day operations director, Mike Roman, retweeted the video early Tuesday morning, declaring “DEMOCRAT ELECTION OFFICIALS BANNING TRUMP POLL WATCHERS IN PHILLY. This is happening all over the City. The steal is on!”
An article from the NY Post (who actually researches their facts before a story goes to print. Something more news outlets should do.)
CONFESSION – in NY POST:
A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.
Mail-in ballots have become the latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections. While President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and their media allies have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.
But the political insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.
“An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,” the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip states.”
The whistleblower — whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post — says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing state.
“There is no race in New Jersey — from city council to United States Senate — that we haven’t worked on,” the tipster said. “I worked on a fire commissioner’s race in Burlington County. The smaller the race, the easier it is to do.”
A Bernie Sanders die-hard with no horse in the presidential race, he said he felt compelled to come forward in the hope that states would act now to fix the glaring security problems present in mail-in ballots.
“This is a real thing,” he said. “And there is going to be a f–king war coming November 3rd over this stuff … If they knew how the sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Mail-in voting can be complicated — tough enough that 84,000 New Yorkers had their mailed votes thrown out in the June 23 Democratic presidential primary for incorrectly filling them out.
But for political pros, they’re a piece of cake. In New Jersey, for example, it begins with a blank mail-in ballot delivered to a registered voter in a large envelope. Inside the packet is a return envelope, a “certificate of mail in voter” which the voter must sign, and the ballot itself.
That’s when the election-rigger springs into action.
Phony ballots
The ballot has no specific security features — like a stamp or a watermark — so the insider said he would just make his own ballots.
“I just put [the ballot] through the copy machine and it comes out the same way,” the insider said.
But the return envelopes are “more secure than the ballot. You could never recreate the envelope,” he said. So they had to be collected from real voters.
I want to ensure all sides of a narrative are told, and not just one. You can reference any of these facts, if you want truth. The U.S. is the only remaining threat and hope towards the CCP Virus – CCP snuck into the U.S. and tried to trigger a Great Reset, but instead they triggered a great awakening. I hope you understand what is truly at stake, and not about a certain gender winning any election. Think outside the box of the LGBT communities.
Keep up the great stories, as they make for excellent reading. You bring one perspective to light. Thank you.