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Blue State Blues: Remember When Democrats Alleged Fraud — This Year?
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JOEL B. POLLAK
27 Nov 2020
The 2020 election began with allegations of fraud — by Democrats.
On Monday, February 3, the Iowa caucuses were held — the formal beginning of the presidential primary. The state had decided to use a new system of voting…
The voters in each community would meet and deliberate, then gather in different parts of the room, raising their hands to indicate their choices. That much remained the same as in previous years.
But in 2020, there was a new twist: candidates who received less than a 15% threshold of votes would be eliminated in the first round of voting.
Then, in a second round, those voters were freed to vote for other candidates; to pool their votes … for a candidate who had failed to clear the threshold in the first round; or not to vote at all.
As if that were not confusing enough, the state’s Democratic Party had adopted a new smartphone application for the reporting of results.
On the crucial night, with the nation watching, the app failed. News anchors muttered in frustration in front of their multimedia screens as the vote count stood stubbornly at zero.
Sensing opportunity, Pete Buttigieg — the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor who had built a fundraising juggernaut as the first openly gay presidential candidate — delivered a victory speech.
“Iowa, you have shocked the nation,” he said . “With hope in our hearts and fire in our bellies, we’re going on to New Hampshire … to chart a new course for our country.”
It soon emerged that Buttigieg’s campaign had paid tens of thousands of dollars to the company that had developed the app, whose unfortunate name was “Shadow.” There were other links to Buttigieg, too, through investors in Shadow.
Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cried foul. They claimed Buttigieg had stolen the election from the Vermont socialist, who would later be confirmed as having won the popular vote in Iowa. (A statewide recount would confirm that Buttigieg narrowly won the race for delegates.)
The hashtags “#PetetheCheat” and “#MayorCheat” trended on Twitter.
These same bizarre conditions would be repeated on a national scale in November.
A new system of voting (vote by mail); delays in reporting; shadowy voting software; premature declarations of victory.
The same factors that led to confusion and suspicion in Iowa virtually guaranteed that there would be perceptions of fraud in the November election. And the vulnerabilities of a mass vote-by-mail system, regarded as the least secure method of voting, also ensured that there would be irregularities. . . .
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