Solano lawmakers urge Republicans to accept election results
Responding to a POLITICO article, State Sen. Bill Dodd said the GOP "simply must accept the outcome of this election."
(Photo: Ballots are processed and counted at a convention center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday, November 6, 2020. Still image courtesy Philadelphia City Commissioners)
As the country waits with baited breath to see who will become the next President of the United States, several political officials in California are urging the nation’s top leaders to accept the inevitable outcome of the election, whatever it might be.
Responding to a POLITICO article on Friday, State Senator Bill Dodd said his Republican counterparts “simply must accept the outcome of this election.”
“To do anything less is to disrespect the will of the people and encourage erosion of our time-tested democratic process,” Dodd, who represents all of Solano County and portions of Yolo County, wrote on Twitter.
Dodd’s comments came as ballot counting continues in several key states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — where mail-in, military and absentee ballots have shifted or are shifting the vote away from President Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent in the race, toward former Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger.
Since Tuesday, the Trump campaign has mounted several legal efforts to stop ballot counting in some of the states, with the president accusing local election officials of running a system that was rampant with voter fraud, ballot harvesting and other misdeeds.
The president’s claims were not backed with any concrete evidence and have largely been deemed meritless by political friends and foes alike. While members of his own party have encouraged Trump to suspend his rhetoric, those in the Democratic party have come out with stronger statements that charge the president with making outright lies in an attempt to stoke fury in his base and disrupt the political process.
“Let me be clear: The president is spreading false information and lies about counting legally-cast ballots throughout our country,” John Garamendi, the California congressman who represents much of Solano County, wrote in a Twitter post on Friday. “His disregard for our sacred democratic process is dangerous and unconscionable.”
Trump has accused local election officials of attempting to sway the election away from his favor through the continued counting of absentee and mail-in ballots long after Election Day. But the counting of those ballots after Election Day is standard practice in California and all other states, with election results not being certified until all ballots are counted, which typically happens several weeks after the polls close.
“We have a legal and moral obligation to take the time to count each and every one, free of partisan pressure,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on Wednesday. “At the end of this, we will emerge as one nation — a truly United States.”
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