ABC is warning us that Republicans may look like they are winning a bunch of races tomorrow, but the truth is they may not after all the votes are counted. There will probably be a “Red Mirage.”

ABC is doing 1 of 3 things in this story I am about to discuss:

1. Prepare people to wait patiently for vote totals to come in, and to discount the wholly legitimate variance between apparent early vote totals and final results. This is the spin if you trust the MSM and the Establishment™
2. Encourage Democrats to buck up and get out to vote, despite early returns in Eastern states that indicate a Republican wave election. This is the “the media is partisan, but not cheaters exactly” explanation.
3. Undercut potentially true Republican claims of election shenanigans perpetrated by Democrats that give Democrats wins days or even weeks after the election. This is the “they are going to try to steal the election with invented late votes” explanation.

First things first: there is no legitimate reason why it should take days or weeks to count votes. At best it is a sign of grotesque government incompetence on the part of election officials. Other countries do it in hours. It shouldn’t take days or weeks. And, as far as I can tell, votes tend to be counted quickly and efficiently in Red areas, so why exactly do Blue cities always get these vote dumps?

We need secure paper ballots, an audit trail, electronic counting with paper backups. It isn’t hard, or unusual, and it is quick. And it is much harder to cheat.

ABC is here to reassure us: no matter how much it looks like Republicans are sweeping the races, it is actually a mirage. Because America, it seems, really sucks at counting votes. Nothing to see here. Move along. Republicans winning is probably an illusion caused by incompetence, not cheating.

A "red mirage," or an artificial GOP vote lead, will likely reoccur Tuesday. https://t.co/tagIbNJscC

— ABC News (@ABC) November 7, 2022

My response: Of course people fear shenanigans when election officials go behind closed doors and take days to count votes. Taking days to count, and hiding how you do it will inevitably raise doubts, because the idea that nobody would cheat if they could is beyond ridiculous.

Telling us to just deal with it is at best making an excuse for government incompetence; at worst it is providing cover for cheating. I think it is a bit of both. Maybe a lot of both, since no rational person can argue that NO cheating goes on–that would be beyond ridiculous and provably wrong. The only question is how much, and does it matter?

Here’s ABC’s pitch for why we should be just fine with things, and assume that Republicans will wind up with fewer wins that it first appears on election night:

As early Election Day results come in on Tuesday, it will likely appear that a Republican candidates vying for any number of the federal or statewide races appear to be leading their Democratic opponents, even by large margins.

Their leads will dwindle, or crumble completely, after perceived “dumps” of votes are recorded by state election officials who count mail-in and absentee ballots in the days — or even weeks — following Election Day.

This phenomenon was popularized as the “red mirage” or the “blue shift” after the 2020 presidential election, when former President Donald Trump took a deceptive lead in several competitive states on Election Day due to delays in counting of Democrats’ mail-in ballots — their preferred method of voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic — only to eventually dissipate when the entire reserve of votes was totaled.

Sounds totally legit, right? Dumps of votes leaning all one way, days or weeks after an election. Anybody who is suspicious is clearly a total crank. After all, public employees are notorious for not caring who wins elections. Public employee unions are all in on objectivity. No partisan ship at all.

Why would anything think that public employees have a stake in the election’s outcome? Clearly oversight is a ridiculous insult to their integrity.

“I am very worried. I’m very worried that election denial forces are much more organized than they were in 2020.”

Every state canvasses vote counts at a different pace, and one of the foremost causes of delayed completion of the unofficial count in 2020 is that some states didn’t even allow the processing of mail-in ballots until polls are closed on Election Day.

The forces of election denial?! It seems to me that if you want everybody to have faith in the election process you shouldn’t make the whole process sketchy as hell, don’t you think? I mean, c’mon. The stories from 2020 where election officials papered up windows, kicked Republican observers out, found ballots after taking long breaks from counting shouldn’t have raised any suspicions? Even if everything were totally on the up and up, would Democrats be comforted if they were on the losing end of this process?

The question answers itself.

When the stakes are this high, maybe a bit of diligence, competence, and transparency are in order? Not attacks on people seeking quite reasonable reassurance that they are not getting reamed. You know, like we were on everything else.

If Donald Trump said “trust me,” do you think Democrats would all just fall in line, ABC? Give us your “objective” opinion on this. We trust you not to put your thumb on the scale, given your record of objectivity.

Not to mention destroying paper trails, wiping data…

Perhaps it was all on the up and up, but shouldn’t it be the responsibility of vote counters to do everything possible to reassure voters that the process isn’t rigged, rather than follow a process that looks rigged and ask us to trust. It really isn’t too much to ask, Bernie Madoff.

The White House has repeatedly–like every 5 minutes–reminded us that vote counting could take a long time. Yada yada.

They do it in France in hours. Why are the Democrats and the MSM setting the stage for endless delays?

I trust them implicitly though, because the people in power have a spotless record of being impartial, because they are defenders of democracy. They tell us so.

Jean-Pierre: "We may not know all the winners of elections for a few days. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner. That's how this is supposed to work." pic.twitter.com/UPPpMjVCNK

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 7, 2022

Just WHY does it take a long time to count votes, exactly? And if there are kinks in the system to work out, work them out. Don’t make excuses. And don’t ask Republicans to trust the people who get “Bottomless Pinnochios.”

We don’t trust the system! Quit screaming at us that we should. Show us that we should.

Because what has been shown to us says that  we really shouldn’t trust either the powers-that-be or the MSM. I seem to recall that just days ago I got asked for amnesty for all the lies, missteps, and hideous damage done during COVID. Am I going to be asked to give amnesty for the 2022 midterm mistakes?

They are literally going to tell us every election now that sure it looks like the GOP won but just wait we’ll count the votes until they didn’t pic.twitter.com/d2vKbAwU2c

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) November 8, 2022

I participated in two recounts here in Minnesota. Both decided by a couple hundred votes. In both–in the few precincts I helped recount–there were groups of ballots which all had the same signature. I asked about it and the County Clerk just shrugged. “It is a nursing home; the nurses fill out the ballots.” That was it. It was therefore OK. I can extrapolate this out to thousands of votes where we know beyond doubt that somebody else voted for the nursing home resident–and we don’t know if they did so at the behest of that resident, or voted for the preferred candidate of the person who actually cast the ballot.

Sounded fishy to me. Did they fill out the ballots as the patients wanted, or the nurses? How would I know? This is not a way to run an election. Votes should be cast by voters. Individually. Yet here in Minnesota the opposite sometimes happens and it is wrong. Trust? No. My candidate lost by 300 votes. Basically a nursing home.

Trust is low. Democrats are throwing shade on the election already. Voter suppression. Hacked voting machines. Russian disinformation. All stories from Monday. they are prepared to call into question the election results if they lose. Now they are making excuses for…what? Delays that result in improbable wins?

The Red Mirage?! “It looked like you won, but trust me, you didn’t?” Not without ironclad proof. I don’t trust you!

In my mind, this is a big “trust us” with no ability to “verify.” Well, I don’t trust the Establishment. I don’t trust ABC News. I don’t trust Karine Jean-Pierre.

Trust goes both ways. You have to earn it, and the Establishment has lost my trust. Count the votes. Quickly and fairly.

So if there is some Red Mirage and the Democrats wind up winning seats they shouldn’t, expect a lot of angry people. I will be one of them. Because I will not believe results without seeing all the evidence.

In a democracy that only seems fair.