Why don't Republicans want all of the votes counted?
After all, they're always the ones screaming about nonexistent voter fraud. They're the ones always working to suppress your vote before you even think about casting it.
Now they want poll officials in Georgia and Arizona and Florida to just stop verifying votes and signatures - stop counting and declare somebody, their guy, of course, the winner while he or she is still ahead.
But elections aren't supposed to be decided until all the votes are tallied. All the votes - not just as many votes as can be counted in say, a two-minute sudden-death overtime.
In Arizona, the GOP sued county recorders and the secretary of state to suppress what could be many valid ballots. The basic argument of the Republican lawsuit is that voters shouldn't be allowed to verify their signatures on mail-in ballots after Election Day.
Wait - hasn't that supposedly been the point of all the GOP's toughening of voting policy to be sure your vote is indeed your vote?
A federal judge rejected the suit, allowing the count to continue.
In Georgia, the GOP candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, as Peach State secretary of state, for months waged a campaign of voter suppression, striking 1.5 million Georgians off the rolls and suspending the registrations of 53,000 - 70 percent of whom were black.
Then on Election Day, voting machines were locked up in areas with large nonwhite populations, shortages of provisional ballots were reported, and voters had to wait in line for hours. Counties said to have reported all of their votes (under Kemp's supervision) are now saying they have more absentee ballots to count. Kemp's opponent, Stacey Abrams, the first black female gubernatorial candidate in American history, has refused to concede. As Esquire noted: "Presumably, if Abrams had conceded, they just never would have counted these votes."
In Florida, the GOP governor, who is now on the ballot for the still-contested Senate seat, has sued to seize ballots and impound voting machines. What third-world country is he from? And President Donald Trump waded in on Monday to push conspiracy theories and demand a halt to Florida vote counting.
"The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged," Trump tweeted without a ounce of proof. "An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!"
No. Must go with complete and official count.
This is not Al Gore's unfairly and incorrectly shortened vote count we're talking about. In this Florida election, there is no impending deadline for an outdated Electoral College meeting. Similarly, one hopes the Democratic candidates for Senate and governor will not prematurely throw in their cards in a misplaced concern for national unity and trust.
Face it, without a complete and official vote count, there is no unity and trust.
Will some irregularities inevitably happen on both sides of balloting? Probably. That's why we have counts and recounts - when we're allowed to get on with the count and recount process.
Of course, counting all of the votes - or not, along with suppressing votes - aren't the first or even second times that the GOP has tried to rig elections. Just look at our GOP gerrymandered congressional districts that infringe on citizens' rights. A federal court said North Carolina targeted black voters with "surgical precision." And just last year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out that state's congressional map and redrew it more fairly.
This is America. We must let all legal voters cast ballots.
And we must count all the votes. All. Then live with the final results.