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Opinion: Stop the steal — start the US election audit

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has announced that lawsuits will be filed on Monday.

By Jeffrey Lloyd, American Spectator

Yes, it is true.

Philadelphia did in fact keep poll watchers out. The baloney propaganda that they were allowed in to do their job is, as the censors of Facebook might say, “partly false.”

Quite clearly, once allowed into the polling place they were told they had to stand six feet away from the person doing the counting. (And only after a storm of complaints was the distance whittled down from over three times as far to six feet.)

Plain old-fashioned common sense says there is no way in the world anyone can thoroughly examine a ballot from six feet away. The poll watchers should have been masked and seated at the same table as the counter. If no social distancing is OK for social justice protests and election celebrations, then no social distancing is most certainly OK for poll watchers.

In other words, what we have witnessed in Philadelphia is nothing short of a brazen theft of an election — right in front of our eyes.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has announced that lawsuits will be filed on Monday.

But well above and beyond the law suits is the urgent need for an audit of all votes cast — an audit conducted directly under the eyes of a Trump and a Biden poll watcher.

If Joe Biden wants “unity” then he needs to get on the stick and demand that audit — a recount. On Saturday thousands of angry Pennsylvanians gathered on the steps of the State Capitol in Harrisburg for a “Stop the Steal” rally. I spoke, the crowd cheering when I said “Stop the steal — start the audit.”

Otherwise the calls for “unity” are nothing but hooey. And speaking of that Biden call for unity, over there at Fox News’ website, former Republican Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz said this:

“Remember when Democrats called for peace and unity in the days following the 2016 election of Donald Trump? Neither do I.…

“When Democrats hold power, we must be unified, and our opposition must be silent. Not to be confused with the rules when Republicans hold power — which are that Resistance is as American as apple pie.”

Chaffetz is spot on.

And one of the first places the New Resistance should take shape is in Republican-held state legislatures around the country. The Constitution says this about state legislatures:

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

Which is to say, the state legislatures decide who is — and is not — going to be one of the twenty Pennsylvania members of the electoral college. In fact, before the election The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reported this:

“In Pennsylvania, three Republican leaders told me they had already discussed the direct appointment of electors among themselves, and one said he had discussed it with Trump’s national campaign.

“’I’ve mentioned it to them, and I hope they’re thinking about it too,’ Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s chairman, told me. ‘I just don’t think this is the right time for me to be discussing those strategies and approaches, but [direct appointment of electors] is one of the options. It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution.’

“He added that everyone’s preference is to get a swift and accurate count. ‘If the process, though, is flawed, and has significant flaws, our public may lose faith and confidence’ in the election’s integrity.

“Jake Corman, the state’s Senate majority leader, preferred to change the subject, emphasizing that he hoped a clean vote count would produce a final tally on Election Night.’

“‘The longer it goes on, the more opinions and the more theories and the more conspiracies [are] created,” he told me. If controversy persists as the safe-harbor date nears, he allowed, the legislature will have no choice but to appoint electors. “We don’t want to go down that road, but we understand where the law takes us, and we’ll follow the law.’

“Republicans control both legislative chambers in the six most closely contested battleground states. Of those, Arizona and Florida have Republican governors, too. In Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the governors are Democrats.”

Which is to say, this is the leverage the Trump campaign needs. Either Biden agrees to an audit, a recount — with poll watchers from each party at the table with the counter — or the Pennsylvania electors will be drawn from a list submitted by the Trump campaign and instructed to vote for Trump.

We shall see.

This election is NOT over. And most certainly President Trump should not concede.