The undeniable truth about the November election needs acceptance from all Americans — Joe Biden indisputably won and it wasn’t really close.
As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell concluded in his remarkable Jan. 6 floor speech when rioters stormed the Capitol, “this election was not unusually close. Just in recent history, 1976, 2000 and 2004 were closer than this one.”
Biden’s Electoral College vote total of 306 equaled Trump’s total in 2016, which Trump claimed was a “landslide.”
Biden received 7 million more popular votes than Trump, a 4.5% margin of victory. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost to President Obama by fewer than 5 million votes, a smaller 3.9% margin.
Nevada has experience with close elections: then-Senator Harry Reid won re-election in 1998 by 428 votes and Republican Paul Laxalt lost his first Senate race in 1964 by only 84 votes.
But Trump’s Nevada defeat was not close. Biden beat Trump by 33,596 votes, exceeding Hillary Clinton’s 27,102 vote win over Trump in 2016.
Biden’s 2020 victory margin over Trump in Nevada was identical to Clinton’s margin over Trump in 2016: 2.4%. The final Real Clear Politics composite poll had Biden winning by 2.4%.
Fueled by misinformation and lies about election fraud and a stolen election, the Trump campaign filed and lost dozens of post-election lawsuits across the country. Attorney General Barr debunked widespread voter fraud claims.
The Supreme Court rejected hearing a state of Texas lawsuit challenging the election result. It denied relief in a unanimous decision, joined in by all three Trump-appointed justices.
In Nevada, the Trump campaign alleged evidence would show tens of thousands of illegal votes were cast by deceased individuals, noncitizens, and those who voted in other states.
Carson City District Court Judge James Russell summarily rejected all the claims presented by the Trump campaign in the election contest lawsuit. His decision, unanimously affirmed by the Nevada Supreme Court, refuted or declined to accept any of the evidence presented by the Trump campaign.
Nevertheless, Republican complaints with the rush by Nevada Democrats last August to enact AB 4, requiring all active registered voters receive an unsolicited mail-in ballot and other provisions, were justified.
AB 4, written by Democratic Party lawyers in Washington, D.C., was the subject of a hastily called special session of the Nevada Legislature. Democrats had mixed-motives in promoting AB 4 under the claim of a pandemic “emergency.”
Nevada’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, strongly opposed AB 4. It passed both the Assembly and Senate on straight party-line votes.
Republicans argued that Nevada’s voter rolls are notoriously inaccurate in a state with a high transient population and that automatically mailing ballots to people who didn’t request them was foolish.
Every legitimate voter who had a concern about voting in person could have easily requested an absentee ballot — an option Nevada voters already had.
In the June primary, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found 93,585 ballots mailed to “active” voters in Clark County were returned by the post office as “undeliverable.”
Those “undeliverable” primary voters should have been removed from the voter list unless they updated their address with the Election Department, critics charge. Instead, they were automatically mailed a ballot for the general election.
Nevada’s voter rolls aren’t maintained to the standard required of an all-mail in experience — like Oregon or Washington have. Both states have refined the process over a decade and aggressively maintain voter lists.
AB 4 also permits previously illegal “ballot harvesting,” a much-abused practice that allows third parties to collect ballots on others’ behalf. It has the greatest potential for fraud.
In 2005, former President Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker headed a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform which made more than 80 recommendations, including requiring REAL ID cards for voting.
Another suggested reform would have mail ballots be verified by using state IDs instead of signatures.
The Nevada Legislature needs to reform state election law to assure ballot integrity this session.
Jim Hartman resides in Genoa. E-mail lawdocman1@aol.com.
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