2016 United States presidential election

“ Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the Vice President to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election. . . . Every American – and certainly the President of the United States – knows that in a democracy, leaders are elected, not installed. ”

“ First, the Office determined that Russia's two principal interference operations in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—the social media campaign and the hacking-and-dumping operations— violated U.S. criminal law. Many of the individuals and entities involved in the social media campaign have been charged with participating in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by undermining through deceptive acts the work of federal agencies charged with regulating foreign influence in U.S. elections, as well as related counts of identity theft. ”

“ On Halloween, advisor Steve Bannon, who had served four years earlier as Donald Trump's 2016 campaign manager, laid out the election night plan. "What Trump's gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He's gonna declare victory. ”

“ And, at 8:22 a.m., President Trump tweeted again, making a pitch for Congress to choose him, as if people's votes on election day and the electoral college didn't matter:
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, OUR COUNTRY, NEEDS THE PRESIDENCY MORE THAN EVER BEFORE—THE POWER OF THE VETO. STAY STRONG! [233]
President Trump's tweets made it clear that he thought the Republican State legislatures would simply deliver him victory. President Trump emphasized this point, writing twice that if Vice President Pence gave in, "we win." ”

“ During the presidential transition, incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had two phone calls with the Russian Ambassador to the United States about the Russian response to U.S. sanctions imposed because of Russia's election interference. After the press reported on Flynn's contacts with the Russian Ambassador, Flynn lied to incoming Administration officials by saying he had not discussed sanctions on the calls. The officials publicly repeated those lies in press interviews. ”

“ Just two days after the election, President Trump's son, Donald Trump, Jr., forwarded to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a suggestion that "State Assemblies can step in and vote to put forward the electoral slate [,] Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. we get Trump electors" and so "we either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January ..." ”

“ Ray La Raja, professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, noted in an article for The Atlantic that America's current system is democratic only in form, not in substance, as the nominating process is vulnerable to manipulation by plutocrats, celebrities, media figures and activists, while many presidential-primary voters mistakenly back candidates who do not reflect their views. ”

“ On December 18th, for example, President Trump urged his supporters and Republican Senators to “get tougher,” tweeting “ [w] e won the Presidential Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT! Don’t let them take it away,” and adding on December 22nd “ [t] he truth is we won the election by a landslide. We won it big.” [20] The next week, President Trump falsely tweeted that the “United States had more votes than it had people voting, by a lot. This travesty cannot be allowed to stand. It was a Rigged Election, one not even fit for third world countries!” ”

“ Article II of our Constitution, as modified by the Twelfth Amendment, governs election of the President. Article II created the electoral college, providing that the States would select electors in the manner provided by State legislatures, and those electors would in turn vote for the President. Today, every State selects Presidential electors by popular vote, and each State's laws provide for procedures to resolve election disputes, including through lawsuits if necessary. ”

“ Once counties and States certified the election, or when it was nearly certain that they would, President Trump and his team’s focus largely shifted. President Trump and his team encouraged State legislators to meet in special sessions, if necessary, and choose electoral college electors who would vote for the Trump/Pence ticket. Ultimately, no State legislature took that step, but it was the basis for pressuring State officials from November through January 6, 2021. ”

“ For ordinary voters, casting their votes to a third party or an independent candidate is nothing more than wasting the ballot. In effect, they can only choose either the Democratic candidate or the Republican one.
⁠In the context of Democratic-Republican rivalry, the general public's participation in politics is restricted to a very narrow scope. For ordinary voters, they are only called upon to vote and are forgotten once they have cast their ballots. Most people are just "walk-ons" in the theater of election. ”

“ Prior to the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, along with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, urged President Trump to embrace mail-in voting as potentially beneficial to the Trump campaign. ”

“ His instinct was to increase public pressure on Vice President Pence, despite the Vice President's consistent message to President Trump about the limits of his authority. That evening, during a Senate campaign rally in Dalton, Georgia, President Trump made it seem as if the Presidential election hadn't already been decided and projected his unhinged ambitions onto his opponents. [167] President Trump claimed that "there's nothing the radical Democrats will not do to get power that they so desperately crave," including "the outright stealing of elections, like they're trying to do with us." ”

“ While we understand four members of the Georgia Senate are requesting the convening of a special session of the General Assembly, doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.
State law is clear: the legislature could only direct an alternative method for choosing presidential electors if the election was not able to be held on the date set by federal law. In the 1960s, the General Assembly decided that Georgia's presidential electors will be determined by the winner of the State's popular vote. ”

“ He said he was a North Carolina Supreme Court justice. He's "retired." He's a real "scholar." He knows about this stuff.
And then he made a final comment about "'ballot drops' changed the election." He'd referenced this a number of times, that at 3 o'clock in the morning a whole bunch of ballots showed up in various swing States disproportionately in favor of Vice President Biden and that changed the outcome of the election. ”

“ Before election day in 2020, a reporter from The Atlantic interviewed Corman and other prominent Republicans in Pennsylvania about the possibility that President Trump would try to circumvent the popular vote in swing States by asking the legislatures to appoint Trump/Pence electors. ”

“ Under the Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral college votes, this triggers a process where the House of Representatives decides the president. When that happens, each State gets one vote for President, chosen by the Representatives from that state. ”

“ Multiple challenges such as voting restrictions, election fraud, and loss of trust in government are accelerating the disintegration of American democracy. Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, writes that America's dysfunctional politics raises fears that the 2024 presidential election would again provoke deadly violence in the country. A large number of hot button issues continued to provoke public anger and questions on the legitimacy of the US political establishment. Many worried about how long American democracy could continue to function. ”

“ Midterm elections have become the most expensive ones in the United States, and American-style democracy has lost its popular support. The cost of elections in the United States has soared again, with cumulative spending of the 2022 midterm elections exceeding more than 16.7 billion U.S. dollars. Political donations from billionaires accounted for 15 percent of the federal total, up from 11 percent in the 2020 election cycle. ”

“ The Presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American President. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. [156]
But as January 6th approached, President Trump nevertheless embraced the new Eastman theories, and attempted to implement them. In a series of meetings and calls, President Trump attempted to pressure Pence to intervene on January 6th to prevent Congress from counting multiple States' electoral votes for Joe Biden. ”

“ Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images the election. [68] There were not enough outstanding votes in the battleground States for President Trump to overcome Biden's lead. President Trump disagreed and insisted that he would still prevail through legal challenges. ”

“ Money in elections has set a new record. American elections are at the heart of its democracy, powered by money. Election costs have soared since donation limits were lifted in 2010 and again in 2014. According to an analysis published by OpenSecrets, the total cost of the 2022 state and federal midterm elections was nearly 17 billion dollars, the most expensive election in history. Federal candidates and political committees spent 8.9 billion dollars, while state candidates, party committees, and ballot measure committees spent 7.8 billion dollars, both of which set all-time records. ”

“ Because Republican voters tend to vote in greater numbers on election day and Democratic voters tend to vote in greater numbers in advance of election day, it was widely anticipated that Donald Trump could initially appear to have a lead, but that the continued counting of mail-in, absentee and other votes beginning election night would erode and could overcome that perceived lead. ”

“ The Democrats – more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it – that’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner. ”

“ Faith in our elections and the rule of law are paramount to our Republic. Election-deniers—those who refuse to accept lawful election results—purposely attack the rule of law and the foundation of our country. ”

“ AP said in a report on Oct. 19, 2022, that there is a general despair over democracy in America which comes after decades of increasing polarization nationwide. Just 9 percent of U.S. adults think democracy is working "extremely" or "very well," while 52 percent say it's not working well, it added. PR Newswire reported on Nov. 4, 2022, that a nonpartisan More Perfect poll before the midterm election showed that 86 percent of voters said the U.S. democracy faces very serious threats. Seventy-two percent of American voters rated the health of American democracy as poor ”

“ President Trump made excuses for the riot, saying this is what happens "when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long." ”

“ Eastman ended on an especially hyperbolic note. If the election's results were not upended, "then the sovereign people no longer control the direction of their government, and we will have ceased to be a self-governing people. The stakes could not be higher." [134]
January 4, 2021: President Trump and Eastman Meet with Pence and His Staff in the Oval Office.
Eastman Argues in an Oval Office Meeting that the Vice President can Reject Electoral Votes or that He Can Delay the Certification, Sending the Electoral Votes Back to the States. ”

“ Several Arizona State lawmakers hosted the meeting at a Hyatt Regency in Phoenix after they did not receive permission to organize an official hearing at the State Capitol. [115] Before the hearing started, State GOP Representative Mark Finchem "promised information to show that the state's 11 electoral votes should not go to Democrat Joe Biden," and argued that "the U.S. Constitution empowers lawmakers to decide, on their own, whether the election was valid and, if not, to select the electors of their choice." ”

“ The United States was founded on the belief that all men are created equal. Every election day, millions of Americans of all races, religions, and backgrounds step into voting booths throughout the Nation. Whether they are rich or poor, old or young, each of them has an equal share in choosing the path that our country will take. And every ballot they cast is a reminder that our founding principles are alive and well. ”

“ However, the U.S. society has been plagued by deep-rooted money politics, unchecked public opinion manipulation and rampant lies, and American democracy has further aggravated social division instead of bridging the increasingly polarized political differences. As a result, the American people enjoy their civil and political rights in name only.
Influence of money in electoral politics essentially makes it a money-led election. Money is the driving force of American politics. America’s money politics has distorted public opinion, turning elections into a “one-man show” for the rich. ”

“ Donald Trump will have lost the election, and Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States.
You can tell a lot about a person from the way they handle defeat. The way Donald Trump has handled defeat says a lot about who he is. ”