Actually, Clinton urged Biden not to concede on election night when votes were being counted, which is not the same as never conceding.
Bannon's deliberate exaggerations and accusations about manufacturing votes went deeper than GOP cliches about Democratic cheating. Bannon has long promoted a white-centric nationalism, notably as the former head of Breitbart News. Now, flying in the face of both democracy and fact, he is asserting that in-person voting on Election Day is more American, and is more accurate, than voting beforehand via a mailed-out absentee ballot.
"They can't beat Trump in the traditional way Americans have voted for 200 years," Bannon said. "You go into a booth, close the curtain. Only two folks know, you and God, know who you vote for. Write it down, bang, done. You vote by mail -- look, I vote by mail. Sometimes, I'm [an] absentee [voter]. I understand it is a risk. Multiple people are going to put their hand on your ballot. And it may not end up being certifiable. That's the risk I took."
Rather than unpacking Bannon's distortions and contradictions for example, absentee ballots originated in the 19th century's Civil War, and Trump votes by mail it is important to grasp the big picture he painted. Bannon relegated votes cast by millions of people, dominated by Biden supporters, into a second-class status. And he disparaged people voting with an absentee ballot as weak and un-American, because they had fallen for media reports about the pandemic.
"You chose not to go to a poll," Bannon said. "The reason you chose is your mass media apparatus, which has dominated this country, was irresponsible and caused mass hysteria on your voters. That's your problem. You're not going to make your problem the nation's problem. And we will not back down one inch. And I'll tell you who is going to join us in that, a guy named Donald J. Trump."
The driving force behind Bannon's narrative, apart from a desire to keep Trump and the GOP in power, was polls and other voter data showing that more Trump supporters were planning to vote on Election Day and more Biden supporters were intending to vote with absentee ballots. In recent weeks, many Democrats have shifted their plans to voting early at in-person sites.
Bannon, nonetheless, built upon the lie that the pandemic was not a threat. He exaggerated problems in the little-known process of vetting returned absentee ballots. In that administrative process, a voter's identity is first verified by officials who review how their ballot-return envelope has been filled out and signed. Only then are ballots taken out and counted.
Bannon claimed that in New York City's June 2020 presidential primary, 30 percent of absentee ballots in Brooklyn and 20 percent of absentee ballots in Manhattan were disqualified because voters did not properly fill out envelopes or returned them too late. (Those high rejection rates did not occur across both boroughs, but only in specific localized settings. In 2018, the national rejection rate for absentee ballots was 1.4 percent, federal data reported. In Florida in 2019, it was 1.2 percent. In Wisconsin's primary this past April, it was 1.8 percent. Sloppy signatures, lines left empty and mistakes with filling out the envelope were the leading causes.)
"Right now" they've requested 1.5 million absentee ballots in Pennsylvania," Bannon said. "Ten to 20 percent will not be certifiable. What that means is it [is] going to be a dogfight in those rooms [in county offices where returned ballots are processed]. Remember, every ballot that can be certified should be certified. And that ballot should count. That's a vote. But you've got a lot of things that you [absentee voters] have got to check off to get to certification, because you chose you chose not to go to a poll."
As of October 15, Democrats requested 1.7 million ballots, Republicans requested 652,000 ballots, and other voters requested 290,000 ballots, the U.S. Elections Project reported.
Democrats and voting rights groups have filed scores of lawsuits to ensure that voters who incorrectly fill out a ballot-return envelope, or whose ballot is postmarked in time but does not arrive at election offices until after Election Day, will still have their votes counted. The Trump campaign and its allies similarly have intervened in those suits and filed their own suits to limit voting and vote counting options. Both parties are trying to shape the rules to their benefit, but some GOP suits are being filed for propaganda purposes and to undermine the results.
"Some of the lawsuits are being filed to generate public conversation that is misinformation or misleading about the illegitimacy of the process, about the existence of widespread voter fraud. These [claims] are not true," said Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. "It's the same challenge that exists outside the litigation context. This has been part of the president's M.O. in the lead-up to this election."
There was no Democratic counterpoint to Trump's assertions that the expansion of voting by mail in response to the pandemic was inherently fraud-ridden, which Bannon implied.
"They just keep counting until they win," he said. "It's got to be fought. And where it's got to be fought is folks like you, as election officials, in that room, no back[ing] down. Every ballot has got to be certified. If it's by the rules, it's good. If it has any, a scintilla of not good, it's not certifiable. Sorry, not sorry, right?"
While Bannon predicted that Trump would declare victory based on partial results, and his campaign would fight to disqualify as many absentee ballots as possible, Bannon repeatedly said that it was the Democrats and their allies who were going to cheat to steal the 2020 election.
"We're not going to allow this election to be stolen, either through some shenanigans in the courts or some shenanigans in mail-in ballots that nobody can actually process," he said. "That will not happen. And the way to make sure that does not happen is, number one, set the predicate on November 3 [by Trump declaring early that he won]. Once we set that predicate that Trump's the winner on Election Day, that is mighty hard to unwind."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
