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Vote and respect the process regardless of the outcome – Orange County Register
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Vote and respect the process regardless of the outcome – Orange County Register

What is most important about November 5?

It’s not if Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, with tens of millions of ardent supporters, returns to the White House.

It’s not if Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, with tens of millions of passionate followers, becomes the first female president of the United States.

The most important thing is that citizens vote in record numbers for the candidate of their choice and respect the right of other citizens to do the same without fear of harassment or belittling. The higher the turnout, the higher the legitimacy of the result. Nothing is more deadly to democracy than an inert people.

What is also important is to defend, protect and support the voluntary workers who do their work with the selflessness of the Good Samaritan.

In addition, it is important to scrupulously follow the legal processes in the various states for contesting votes and to accept, without question, final court decisions.

What’s more important is that Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are both urging their followers to honor the nation’s constitutional processes for the peaceful transfer of presidential power, period, without commas, question marks, or semicolons.

In other words, we must make the most important winner on November 5 of the peaceful process of electing the President of the United States. If the lawsuit wins, all Americans win. We remain the gold standard in self-governance for the entire world.

Lawsuits are the heart and soul of American greatness.

The government’s purpose in criminal prosecutions is not to win or lose a case, but to ensure that justice is done. Mankind is made of crooked wood. To err is human. All institutions make mistakes from time to time. The phantasmagorical trial of OJ Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman ended in acquittal. But the jury’s verdicts were honored, and we were preserved with the multiple procedural safeguards against convicting the innocent—the centerpiece of civilization.

We should expect a very close race between Trump and Harris. Legal challenges to the ballot are likely in seven battleground states – Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. There is nothing suspicious about trying to prove electoral fraud in courts of law with admissible evidence and procedures to discover the truth and discredit the false. Since the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Trump or his campaign have filed more than 60 voter fraud lawsuits before judges spanning the spectrum of partisan affiliation. In no case was legally admissible evidence of fraud presented. Former Attorney General William Barr repeatedly informed Mr. Trump that his claims of voter fraud were “prosecutorial . . .”

Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 set the standard to which 2024 presidential candidates should conform. He peacefully accepted his loss to Republican nominee George W. Bush, occasioned by the controversial US Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, which awarded Florida’s electoral votes to Mr. Bush.

Of course, judges can be wrong. Courts are not infallible. But their final rulings must be scrupulously respected if the rule of law is to endure. Candidates or their supporters cannot be judges in their own cases and violate court decrees they do not like by force and violence. The United States will be undone if the election is decided by bullets rather than ballots.