Trump, like Granger, claims he won but that election was fraudulent

By all indications, US Democratic nominee for President, Joe Biden is set to win the 2020 election. However, despite several publications calling the election in his favour, Biden’s opponent, Republican nominee, President Donald Trump took to Twitter yesterday, claiming that he won as well. There is a glaring caveat to Trump’s claim. He is simultaneously casting doubt on the integrity of the very electoral process he claims to have won.

This is not a trope unfamiliar to the Guyanese public. As this country endured the painstaking five-month electoral process in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also faced a situation in which the losing party declared that the electoral process, which it claims to have won, was fraudulent.

There are many similarities between what is happening right now in the US, and the recently concluded general and regional election process in Guyana. They are in fact so plentiful that social media users have posted memes, joking that Trump took a page out of the playbook of the Guyana coalition, A Partnership for National Unity +Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC).

Here are some of the similarities:

Supporters crowd counting centers
Several US publications reported that dozens of Trump supporters protested in Michigan and Arizona, two of the final States to have been called. In one case, as they descended on one counting station in Detroit, Michigan, the Trump supporters shouted “STOP THE COUNT!”
In Arizona, as the Trump supporters gathered around an election office in Phoenix, it became apparent that they were victims of unproven rumours that the President’s votes were not being counted.
Trump had beaten 2016 Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton in the two States. This time around, Biden flipped them both, earning him the 27 delegates allotted.

In Guyana, APNU+AFC supporters had descended on the Region Four counting centre, while it was at Ashmin’s Building, and as well as when it moved to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM)’s Kingston Headquarters. They also appeared at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, where the National Vote Recount occurred, heckling reporters and representatives of other parties.

Unproven claims about dead and migrant voters
On Thursday, CNBC reported that Trump’s campaign announced intent to file a federal lawsuit to disqualify thousands of “illegal” Nevada votes, which it said came from those who are dead or who became non-residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“But when pressed for evidence of those alleged illegal ballots,” CNBC stated, “a Trump campaign surrogate refused to answer reporters at a press conference, and said questions about the ballots should be directed to the Clark County, Nevada, clerk’s office.”
These were the very claims made by the David Granger-led Coalition in Guyana, in March. When asked to provide evidence of the alleged fraud, the campaign embarked on a campaign of disinformation. When the claims were investigated, they were proven to be unsubstantiated.

Recount
In Georgia, one of the final States to have been called, Trump had been in the lead for quite some time until Biden surpassed him and slowly began to widen his own lead over Trump.
The State has been reliably Republican in its voting patterns for many years. Election officials in Georgia recently announced that there would be a recount, since the result was adjudged “too close to call”.
The Trump campaign also announced that it will demand a recount in Wisconsin.

In Guyana, when the Region Four Returning Officer, Clairmont Mingo declared the result, there was so much controversy over the integrity of the count that the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) decided to plan a recount. The recount lasted for 33 days, and uncovered that the Returning Officer for Region Four had tampered with the District’s Statements of Poll to give the losing Coalition an artificial victory.

Baseless claim to victory
“I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” the US President tweeted yesterday after the major new agencies had called the election for Biden. There was no basis for the President’s claim, with Twitter attaching a disclaimer to the tweet – in the past week, the social media company has flagged many of Trump’s tweets about the election as disputed or potentially misleading.

During Guyana’s 2020 election season, APNU+AFC’s campaign manager, now Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon claimed several times that the Coalition won the election, while claiming that it is fraudulent.
It had already been uncovered at the time, that the Region Four Returning Officer rigged the elections. Kaieteur News had already analysed a series of boxes, and proved that the coalition’s vote totals were inflated, while those of its opposition were deflated.

Legal challenges to election results
Time Magazine reported that in the past week alone, the Trump campaign has filed roughly a dozen lawsuits, most attempting to stop the counting of votes or disqualify certain votes. They were concentrated in some of the last remaining States that were called, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. The publication said that judges already tossed out lawsuits in several of those States.
In Guyana, there were many legal challenges made during the process. Many of them were started by the APNU+AFC coalition. They were so plentiful that in the end, judges determined that the repeated attempts to litigate the same matters amounted to an abuse of the court’s process. APNU+AFC went on to file two elections petitions.

Statements from the two campaigns, when juxtaposed against each other, are strikingly similar.
The Granger Coalition in July had said, “Any attempt to include fraudulent votes in a ‘declaration’ will constitute a violation of the constitution and the fundamental principles of democracy. We maintain that the Elections Commission can only make a ‘declaration’ based on valid votes.”

After Biden declared victory yesterday, Trump said “The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots. This is the only way to ensure the public has full confidence in our election. It remains shocking that the Biden campaign refuses to agree with this basic principle and wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters.”