[EL] Accepting the results of the election

[Rick Hasen]

On the Al Gore analogy:

https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi/status/788946302818258944/photo/1


On 10/19/16, 8:19 PM, "law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu on behalf of Rick Hasen" <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu on behalf of rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:


    http://electionlawblog.org/?p=87772

    Donald Trump’s Makes Chilling and Unprecedented Debate Comment About Not Accepting the Result of the Election
    Posted on October 19, 2016 8:13 pm by Rick Hasen

    NYT:

    Mr. Trump also insisted, as he has in recent days, that the general election has been rigged against him, and he twice refused to say that he would accept its result.

    “I will look at it at the time,” Mr. Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.’’

    “That’s horrifying,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “I am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that position.”

    This is appalling and unprecedented in modern American history. There was no hedging from Trump, as in, of course I’d accept the results unless the results were very close and there was room to contest things. Nothing like that. This is the full Breitbartization of the election, and it makes me worry about violence in the streets from his supporters if Trump loses.

    This is not new, but saying it again, in this debate at this point in the campaign, made it especially chilling.  As I wrote on October 1:

    One of the things we take for granted is that even in tumultuous times when elections are hard fought, the losers concede the election and embrace the process, even if things did not go well. That’s what Al Gore did after the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore. He did not call for demonstrations in the streets, which could have been destabilizing. In 2008, after great controversy over the Bush years, Obama v. McCain was very hard fought, but we were able to come together again as a country. As I blogged on Inauguration Day in 2009:

    Regardless of your politics, today is a day to celebrate the remarkable peaceful transitions to power that occur in this country with each presidential transition. It is something we should not take for granted.

    Donald Trump threatens this peace by raising the prospect not only of sending his supporters, unsupervised, into polling places (likely in minority neighborhoods). This can lead to voter intimidation on election day. He has also backed off his earlier, somewhat ambiguous statement that he would support Hillary Clinton if she won. Now, speaking to the New York Times he made a chilling statement:

    Mr. Trump, aiming to unnerve Mrs. Clinton, even indicated that he was rethinking his statement at their last debate that he would “absolutely” support her if she won in November, saying: “We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see.”

    This is already having an effect on his supporters. According to an AP-NORC poll:

    Only about one-third of Republicans say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that votes on Election Day will be counted fairly, according to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    Half the people who have a favorable opinion of the Republican nominee say they have little to no confidence in the integrity of the vote count, the poll finds.

    This is what happens when a candidate irresponsibly sows doubts.

    Trump’s gambit may be planned or, more likely, he’s just making it up as he goes along. It is no joke. Our democracy is a fragile thing which depends upon accepting the rules of the game.

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    Posted in chicanery, fraudulent fraud squad, The Voting Wars
    On 10/19/16, 8:15 PM, "Kelner, Robert" <rkelner at cov.com> wrote:

        Of course a presidential candidate can contest results in the exceptionally rare case of a truly close election. But neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore would ever have hesitated to say, prior to the election, that they would respect the outcome of the election. That hideous distinction is now uniquely owned by Donald Trump.

        Sent from my iPhone

        On Oct 19, 2016, at 11:08 PM, "JBoppjr at aol.com<mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com>" <JBoppjr at aol.com<mailto:JBoppjr at aol.com>> wrote:

        Some of those on this list serve may have taken note of this exchange:

        Chris Wallace: "Will you accept the result of this election?"
        Donald Trump: "I will look at it at the time. ... I will keep you in suspense."
        Hillary Clinton: "That's horrifying."

        Let me say that I think that Clinton's reaction was as phony and as it was absurd. Al Gore did not accept the results of the 2000 election. He sued for a recount in Florida which was not resolved until early December by a decision of the US Supreme Court. Only then, when no other legal recourse was possible, did he accept the results of the election. This, of course, was Gore's legal right to do. It would be ridiculous for Trump to say in advance that he will accept the election day count, if it would be appropriate to institute a recount.

        State laws provide legal remedies to contest election or ask for recounts under certain circumstances. It is perfectly appropriate for a candidate to use these if legally available. Jim Bopp
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