Tiffany Lee properly dismissed ongoing claims of fraud in the 2020 election, saying simply, “Enough is enough.” She did so, in part, because she is too professional and too polite to use more vulgar language.
Lee was spot on. But then this county is used to that. Call it everyday excellence, but the La Plata County clerk and recorder – and her office – constitute an ongoing reminder that talk-radio jokes about government incompetence largely miss the mark. (And it takes nothing away from Lee to note that tradition of competence began before her election.)
How these fraud allegations were handled exemplifies that. Lee was part of a bipartisan group of county clerks assembled in Denver on April 3 to address those claims. In particular, Lee, who is unaffiliated, stood with Weld County Clerk Carly Koppes, a Republican, and Boulder County Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick, a Democrat, to denounce claims of voter fraud as false.
That is exactly the message this whole country needs and it needs to hear it in that bipartisan fashion. The simple fact is that there is every reason to understand that the 2020 election was fair and honest – and no reason to think otherwise.
Assertions are not evidence and jumping up and down is not proof. “My guy didn’t win!” is not an argument for the existence of fraud. And just because drinking buddies and talking heads say the election was rigged does not make it so.
To this day, despite numerous court cases and endless hot air, there has been exactly zero actual evidence presented to so much as suggest the 2020 election was wrongly decided. Serious people of both parties know full well that 2020 was perhaps the most fairly conducted election in American history.
The ongoing flap about electoral fraud does not represent a liberal-conservative divide. Nor does it reflect a Republican vs. Democrat split. This ginned-up controversy is simply the product of Donald Trump and his acolytes’ fevered imaginations.
But it could be worse. Watching the behavior of Vladimir Putin and others like him, it is not hard to see this “stop the steal” nonsense as part of a broader, more serious attack on American values – indeed on the very idea of democracy. Can anyone imagine Ronald Reagan or either Bush praising and expressing admiration for Putin as Trump has? Can anyone imagine Barack Obama accepting billions of dollars from a murderous Saudi prince, as Trump reportedly did?
Tiffany Lee was first elected as a Republican, but switched to unaffiliated. Presumably that was to declare herself a noncombatant in the trench warfare American politics has become. But if this country’s continued functioning as a republic is at issue, and Trump and his acolytes’ behavior suggests it may be, elections will be the battleground.
The battle will not be over who wins, but how. Are we to have honest and transparent elections, open to all? Or will elections become personality cults with only the most shameless liars elected? Democracy, not fraud, is what is at issue.
