It is up to all of us to keep them from trying to steal further elections!

Kathie Costos

July 25, 2021

When we listen to reporters talking about the election they don't seem to get it. How could they miss the biggest part of all these allegations over the right for people to vote in this country? This was a stolen election! Not the one from 2020 because Trump lost that one over and over again, as you'll read below, but this was the beginning of stealing elections to come.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C on Jan. 6, 2021. Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote certification. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images) SOURCE: ROBERTO SCHMIDT (KMBC News)

We watched in horror as the US Capitol was attacked by fellow Americans screaming about "stopping the steal" when they were in fact attempting to do exactly that. They didn't like the results, so they tried to stop it from being accepted by Congress.

Trump set the stage for all of this by claiming if he lost, it meant the election was stolen. That was all he had to do to set things in motion.

Fact Check took a look at the claims made by the previous president. Point by point, they showed how the claims were false. 

Courts rejected the claims of a stolen election.

Fact check: Courts have dismissed multiple lawsuits of alleged electoral fraud presented by Trump campaign

In the early morning of Jan. 7, hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the U.S. Congress certified enough Electoral College votes for President Biden to declare him winner of the election ( here ).  

As reported by Reuters here , state and federal judges - some appointed by Trump - dismissed more than 50 lawsuits brought by Trump or his allies alleging election fraud and other irregularities.

So many claims were made about absentee ballots it was impossible to keep track of. What was missed, among many, was they were also claiming military votes were stolen because Trump couldn't believe so many members of the military were not supporting him. Facts proved he was wrong, no matter what his ego would not allow him to even contemplate.

Members of the military rely on absentee voting

According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program's 2018 post-election report to Congress, the Defense Department sent 655,409 absentee ballots to personnel serving abroad, and more than half, or 344,392, were returned, a rate comparable to the overall percentage of Americans who voted in the midterm elections.

Georgia military votes were not stolen but over and over again, he and his supporters, pushed that rumor with no evidence to prove anything they claimed. Over and over again, in each state, they attacked mail in ballots during a pandemic setting the stage for all other elections to be jeopardized.

There are members of the Senate who refused to see that Republicans Senators will never support voter integrity legislation to protect the rights of voters when they can easily take over the results. 

There was a time when people wanted their votes to be earned by politicians. After all, the funds they spend come from what taxpayers pay for. Now they want to use our tax dollars to prevent us from using our voice to vote for who we believe will do the best job for us.

Now in state after state, they are passing laws that will take away our voice by vote, using rumors started by Trump and his supporters to cover up for what they wanted to do all along. It doesn't matter how many citizens served in the military to protect and defend the Constitution, including the right to vote, as long as they win. 

It was appalling to hear people were pleased the Capitol was attacked. It is appalling to hear the lies about what we saw with our own eyes. It is repulsive to know so many of our elected officials are standing in the way of holding people accountable for all of this. If they stand in the way, we need to wonder if it is because they were part of all of this and do not want their participation proven. The innocent would want the evidence to come out to prove they were wrongly accused. The guilty want to prevent evidence from proving their guilt!

It is time for members of the Senate to remove the obstacle of the filibuster and defend the rights so many generations of American fought for.

Editorial: Senate Republicans won’t even consider voting rights. The filibuster must go

"...Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Democrats were aiming to “tilt every election in America permanently in their favor.” That was an unfair, even outrageous, characterization of the Democrats’ proposal, the ambitious For the People Act, not to mention an exercise in projection.

The For the People Act in its Senate and House versions was arguably too large and complicated a piece of legislation, stitching together a multitude of proposals including disclosure requirement for political contributions, public financing of congressional elections and even an ethics code for the Supreme Court."

The 19th Amendment was hard fought for to allow women the right to vote. This was when elected officials fought to expand voting rights, not prevent them! Notice how many "Red" States were among the first to do it?

Between 1910 and 1918, the Alaska Territory, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington extended voting rights to women.

Also during this time, through the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later, the Women’s Political Union), Stanton’s daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch introduced parades, pickets and marches as means of calling attention to the cause. These tactics succeeded in raising awareness and led to unrest in Washington, D.C.

Did you know? Wyoming, the first state to grant voting rights to women, was also the first state to elect a female governor. Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977) was elected governor of the Equality State—Wyoming's official nickname—in 1924. And from 1933 to 1953, she served as the first woman director of the U.S. Mint.

The article goes on to point out how long this was fought for.

In 1918, President Wilson switched his stand on women’s voting rights from objection to support through the influence of Catt, who had a less-combative style than Paul. Wilson also tied the proposed suffrage amendment to America’s involvement in World War I and the increased role women had played in the war efforts.

When the amendment came up for vote, Wilson addressed the Senate in favor of suffrage. As reported in The New York Times on October 1, 1918, Wilson said, “I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.”

The Bill failed in the Senate by 2 votes.

Rep. James Mann brought it up again. This time, it passed.

On May 21, 1919, U.S. Representative James R. Mann, a Republican from Illinois and chairman of the Suffrage Committee, proposed the House resolution to approve the Susan Anthony Amendment granting women the right to vote. The measure passed the House 304 to 89—a full 42 votes above the required two-thirds majority.

Two weeks later, on June 4, 1919, the U.S. Senate passed the 19th Amendment by two votes over its two-thirds required majority, 56-25. The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification.

How could we have gone from elected officials fighting for the rights of citizens to vote, into what we have now when so many of them are fighting to take away the right to vote? It is up to all of us to keep them from trying to steal further elections!