The Shoemaker Bugle

By Edmund Shryock–Political Correspondent

On Saturday, November 6, 2020, after several tense days of counting votes, Joe Biden was elected to be the 46th President of the United States, with Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes enough to push him over the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory.

As Biden and Harris prepare for these upcoming four years, President Trump may close out his 4-year term in a legal battle over the election results. The Trump Campaign has lawsuits in five states on the basis of voter fraud. The states include Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia. If Trump would have won these states, he would have had enough votes to win a re-election.

However, due to the large number of mail-in ballots that usually lean Democrat, President Trump’s election day lead in these battleground states diminished as the vote count continued. This is part of a theory known as the “Blue Shift,” which occurs when largely democratic mail-in and absentee ballots are known to shift the vote totals as they are being counted. These “blue shift” ballots were especially plentiful this year because so many people stayed away from voting locations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Trump campaign is going to find it hard to gather proper evidence of actual voter fraud. However, it is in President Trump’s rights to ask for a recount in these states, which is especially important because the results were fairly close in many states. However, Americans still look to President Trump to guide the peaceful transfer of power to President-Elect Biden, which will take place on Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021.

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Election Recap:

As November 3rd, 2020 was drawing near, Americans had to decide between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, making this election one of the most influential elections in American history.

This election became confusing, with different opinions and facts dominating five important issues that decided the 2020 election for voters:

1. Coronavirus Response- Donald Trump and the Republicans are strong supporters of reopening the country to get Americans back to where they were in January of this year. However, Joe Biden and the Democrats are keen on making sure that Americans take this virus seriously by wearing masks and distancing to lower the amount of Coronavirus Cases in America.
2. The China Issue- Donald Trump and his relations with China is a rough one. He put tariffs on steel and goods being exported from China. If he had won a second term for President, there was a good chance that relations between China and the U.S. would have worsened. However, Joe Biden is a supporter of China, and when he was Vice-President under Obama they signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This increased trade with China and other countries. Trump removed America from this agreement in 2017.
3. The Supreme Court Debacle- On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Guinsburg died of pancreatic cancer. This left a vacancy on the Supreme Court, which is a repeat of what happened in 2016 when Justice Anthony Scalia died during an election year, too. In 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. However, the Republican senate never gave him a confirmation hearing. This year, with a Republican President and Senate in control, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated, and she was confirmed just a week before the election on October 26. This is important because Supreme Court Justices don’t serve terms, they serve on the Supreme court for life, which can affect the next 30-40 years and multiple generations.
4. The Senate Shift- The Senate has been a Republican majority since 2015 and have passed votes as a majority, even stopping Trump from getting removed from office after he was impeached. This year there were 23 Republican seats up for grabs and 12 Democrat seats. As of this writing, the Senate is currently tied with 48 Democrats and 48 Republicans. A run-off election in Georgia coming up on January 5, 2021 could lead to the Republicans losing the majority. If Democrats win the Senate, the Democrats would control both houses of Congress.
5. Important Swing States and the Electoral College- The important number that both candidates needed to get on election night was 270 electoral college votes. The electoral college is different for each state. The population of a state determines how many electoral votes they get. For example, California has the largest population and counts for 55 electoral votes. The so-called “swing states,” which were undetermined until late into and even after election night, made all the difference: even though Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina went to Trump, Biden’s victories in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia swung the votes in his favor.