After a tumultuous “election week” and national media projections of President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College, a divided nation has grown more divided. At midnight on election night on Nov. 3, vote totals suggested Trump would win a majority of the critical swing states, particularly those that Biden was trying to reclaim from the 2016 election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Hours later, the American people woke up to an upsurge in the number of Biden ballots that would, by the end of the week, cause numerous media outlets, from CNN to BBC, to project wins for Biden in all three of these states, as well as in Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona.
The sudden change of events over the course of Tuesday night prompted speculation from President Donald Trump, who claims that the influx of overnight Biden votes is a clear indication of voter fraud and irregularities in the voting system. His allegations led him to proceed with legal action, and he called upon a team to try overruling votes counted in Pennsylvania after the polls had already closed to dismiss the absentee and mail-in ballots that favored Biden.
Opposite-wing speculation of election results has been prevalent in the US, as seen in 2016 when Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Critics of the election claimed foreign interference from Russia influenced the result of the election, delegitimizing Trump’s presidency.
However, Trump’s allegations against voting centers in key swing states have proven to be unjustified: his tweets regarding the extensive fraud in this year’s election have elicited backlash from Democrats and some Republicans alike, who, along with millions of other Americans, believe that Trump’s claims hold no basis. Twitter officials have also recognized the possibility of misleading remarks from Trump and have flagged numerous tweets regarding the irregularities of the election as being “disputed.”
On Nov. 17, Trump fired Chris Krebbs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after Krebbs delivered a statement announcing that there is no evidence that any voting system was compromised during the 2020 election.
The staff at The Viking Logue believes that due to the lack of evidence supporting Trump’s accusations of voter fraud and political interference, we should accept President-Elect Biden as the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. Despite beliefs of widespread vulnerabilities in our voting system, the fact that Trump’s legal team has not overturned the votes necessary to win the election results prompts us to believe that the 2020 election was fair. Thus, we remain confident about the legitimacy and security of the American election process and continue to have faith in our election outcomes.