The mindset of a Trump-level sore loser
By: Shamontiel L. Vaughn
Tags: Election Day, Election 2020, Election Night, Battleground States, Donald Trump

The mindset of a Trump-level sore loser

If you think you can earn a win, there’s no need to get upset

Photo credit: Cottonbro/Pexels

There was a kid I befriended in elementary school. He was a handsome, athletic, extremely smart and charming guy, but the ugliest side of him always came out when sports were involved. He would scream, pump his fists and growl whenever his team wasn’t winning at volleyball, dodge ball or any other team sport. He was the kind of guy who you hope would never pick you for his team because you knew he would act up the whole time. But as soon as the game was over, especially if he won, he went right back to being a charmer. I remembered that when he added me on Facebook last year, after I’d neither seen nor heard from him in more than two decades.

Electors have until December 14, 2020 to confirm. But Trump, in all his sore-loser glory even before he lets the remaining battleground states complete their votes, wanted a vote on Election Night — all while I’m remembering that I didn’t get home until 11 p.m. just being an Election Judge.

The first thing I asked him was had he calmed down about being a sore loser. He laughed it off and admitted that he was a bit intense. I never thought I could meet nor encounter anyone — including a consistently annoying boss who ranked first in Competition with CliftonStrengths — who could possibly be more competitive and more of a sore loser than these two. Although the school friend was still very likable 99.9 percent of the time and the boss was tolerable in a Michael Scott 50/50 way, the third person who has become world’s biggest sore loser is not likable nor handsome nor charming nor mildly smart. Let’s talk about Donald Trump.

Beyond belief at a man protesting the possibility of winning — or losing

If you have ever been an Election Judge, you are fully aware that it takes quite a bit of time to get ballots to ballot counters and to decide on winners. In the three times that I was a Judge in Illinois, we closed the polling station at 7 p.m. But we still had to allow every single person in line the opportunity to vote, while dealing with an occasional last-minute person banging on the door knowing full well (s)he was late. When everyone had officially voted, the Election Judges would immediately dive in to properly dismantle equipment while Election Coordinators focused on the e-poll books and running all the numbers.

As a new Election Judge, a job like this with a team of five to seven could take about two hours — depending on how tech savvy the team is. Once you knew what you were doing, the Key Judge (the final person to leave) and Election Coordinator could manage to help everyone pack up within one hour. But that still meant a Republican Election Judge and a Democratic Election Judge had to go to specified facilities to drop off electronic equipment in one bag and all the rest of the bagged voting material were loaded onto a truck.

I’ve stood in that ballot line for well over an hour — after being the Key Judge that had to help pack up voting equipment at the initial polling station. The first time I was an Election Judge, I didn’t get home until somewhere between 10:30 to 11 p.m. So it absolutely boggles my mind that Donald Trump is asking for a recount on votes that haven’t officially been submitted (or even finished counting) by the electors.

Photo credit: Element5 Digital/Pexels

Listening to Donald Trump threaten to take the Election Day results as high as the Supreme Court — to no one’s surprise after Amy Coney Barrett was shoved in with as much thought as someone standing outside of a hardware store looking for repair work —is a level of desperation that is somehow startling to me. It would’ve made more sense to do so if he was close by the end of Election Night. But his irrational tirades about telling ballot counters to stop counting votes and just go with whoever had the highest number wouldn’t work, mainly because former Vice President Joe Biden was ahead by the end of the night.

Then the next level of desperation was to just go with whatever the battleground state results were, without mail-in votes, but he clearly never expected to have such close races in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. And then Arizona did the unthinkable; the red state gave a thumbs down to Trump in favor of Biden for the first Democratic win in 24 years. (Pour out a little of your favorite drink for the late Senator John McCain, an arch-nemesis of Trump’s who had the decency to discredit the Obama birtherism fallacy.)

While everyone on social media is pointing the finger at white people and racism, black men and elitism, misogyny, Affordable Care Act and anything else they can think of, I’m far more focused (right now) on how a man who has been in the White House for four years still doesn’t understand how elections work. I have been disgusted by him many times— from not knowing Frederick Douglass was dead, not having enough brainpower to realize Lil Wayne is not a star endorsement for black people, totally missing the link between black history and HBCUs, and being too delusional to realize coronavirus is deadly. But Trump not understanding how elections work is bare minimum, open-book test simplicity.

Election Day basics for the everyday American — and clueless Trump

Here are the basics you need to know after an election:

Credible journalists (like Associated Press) do not make the call on the winner until they see that mathematically a trailing candidate cannot possibly win his state with the remaining votes. (Know this before you look at interactive maps on anyone’s news website.)

Ballotpedia does not project a winner until there is a consensus projection made by a pool of five national news outlets (ABC, CNN, FOX, NBC and NYT).

Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan and Georgia are still counting mail-in ballots, which they legally have the right to do.

Nevada and Georgia also called it a night on Election Day to continue with counting received ballots before the cut-off point today (Wednesday morning).

Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were not allowed to begin processing absentee ballots until or just before Election Day. And this is due to Republican-led state legislatures successfully opposing earlier preparation tactics.

Twenty-eight states will only count ballots that arrive before or on November 3, Election Day. The remaining 22 states, plus the District of Columbia, will count all ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day, even if they arrive later. Those deadlines vary by state.

The latter 22 states that will accept ballots after Election Day represent 317 of the nation’s 538 electoral college votes* — or 59 percent. That’s one (of many) reasons a winner would not be declared right away on the night of Election Day.

If a majority of electors fail to agree on a winner, Congress picks the winner in continent elections held within Congress under the terms of the 12th Amendment.

The Constitution’s 20th Amendment requires the president and vice president to end their terms of office on January 20 at noon in the year following the general election, if not re-nominated.

And most importantly, Congress by statute controls when electoral votes are counted at the states and at Congress: “The electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.”

That statute means the electors have until December 14, 2020 to confirm. But Trump, in all his sore-loser glory even before he lets the remaining battleground states complete their votes, wanted a vote on Election Night — all while I’m remembering that I didn’t get home until 11 p.m. just being an Election Judge. I just cannot grasp how someone in the White House for four years still thinks counting ballots is like counting your cash register at the end of one shift — with more than 100 million early votes already cast before Election Day, including the 60K wasted votes for Kanye West.

On a daily basis, I am learning that Donald Trump can never cease to amaze me. I think he’s reached the absolute bottom of the barrel with “stand back and stand by” and “very fine people on both sides,” and then he does something else. I understand why people fight to win. I could wrap my mind around why my school friend and the boss loved awards and victory speeches. I get it. But while I understand the drive to win, I will never understand a sore loser this irrational — who still doesn’t even know if he’s lost.

* At this time of this publication, Trump would have to win all four battleground states (Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, Nevada) to get the 57 electoral votes to win. Joe Biden just needs Nevada (6 points) to win it all. Trump still got smoked on popular votes by a difference of 3,475,570 million.