GOP shoulders responsibility to prove elections aren’t fake

With no other live sports to watch Saturday morning, I tuned into the replay of the 2016 Ohio State-Michigan football game.

That’s the J.T. Barrett/bad spot game. The one where the Michigan defense appeared to stop the Ohio State quarterback short of the 15-yard line on 4th down in double overtime, a play which would have given No. 3 Michigan a 27-24 win.

The refs saw it differently. The Buckeyes were given the first down. Curtis Samuel scored the game-winning touchdown on the next play.

Michigan fans felt screwed. The Wolverines outplayed Ohio State (and that’s my analysis as a Michigan State fan). Absent a couple interceptions, Ohio State would have lost by double digits.

However, Michigan lost, and that’s the point of this week’s column.

The University of Michigan didn’t allege widespread fraud. They didn’t break away from the Big Ten. They didn’t create their own college football conference.

They grumbled and moaned and made excuses (as Michigan fans are good at) until they let it go and … then kept losing to Ohio State year after year.

But let’s not talk about that.

Let’s talk about the Republican Party. They are led by a president who, as recently as this week, questioned the error rate of Michigan’s voting machines. Six weeks after Election Day results showed him losing to Biden, he continues to push a belief he didn’t lose “legitimately.”

Basically, we have “fake” elections. Sound familiar? President Donald Trump doesn’t like press coverage? It’s “fake news.” He doesn’t like the result the election? Same thing.

I’m not going to blow up Trump over this. Republicans need to do address this.

According to last week’s Quinnipiac survey, 77% of Republicans believe there was widespread fraud in the election and 70% believe Joe Biden’s win was not legitimate.

That’s not good. Having 77% of Republicans think Joe Biden’s energy policy is bull is the underpinning of a democratic republic. Having 77% think the election isn’t valid erodes the underpinnings of the democratic republic.

If we don’t have faith in how we elect our own leaders, what do we have? What’s the solution? Trump using the military to take over the government? Hey, it happens in other countries.

We got yahoos running around concocting unsettling fantasies of tying up Governor Whitmer and setting her adrift out in Lake Michigan. We had Rep. Gary Eisen publicly question whether a protest of the Electoral College vote could be done peacefully.

House Speaker Lee Chatfield and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey are coming around to addressing this issue. On the issue of using the state House to switch around Michigan’s electors Chatfield said he would not do it out of fear “we’d lose our country forever. This truly would bring mutually assured destruction for every future election.”

Shirkey said while “numerous claims” of fraud have been unearthed, those claims have been found to be “incorrect or incapable of being proven.”

Other Republican leaders needs to join them.

Most voters don’t have the time, energy and ability to flyspeck Rudy Giuliani’s white binder of alleged fraud and crosscheck that with information provided by Detroit elections adviser Chris Thomas and other elections officials.

All they know is that they love Trump. Their universe of family and friends love Trump, too. Trump is saying there’s fraud. Republican poll watchers at the TCF Center in Detroit saw some fishy stuff. They’re willing to attest to it in an affidavit. How could Trump lose when everyone they know voted Trump? Fraud it must be.

Losing elections is part of democracy. Sometimes your person wins. Sometimes they do not.

Laying waste to the entire election process isn’t a political argument. It’s destructive. It’s also being a sore loser. Nobody likes those. Like Michigan’s football team in 2016, it’s time to move on.

(Kyle Melinn of the Capitol news service MIRS is at melinnky@gmail.com.)