Does Trump's Big Win Mean Elections Are Fine Now?

Topic: Perspective

Unless you’ve just wakened from a coma or returned from outer space and somehow had no communication with Earth when you were out there, you surely know by now that Donald J. Trump is set to join Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897) as the only men in history to be elected to two non-consecutive terms as U.S. President.  Despite significant headwind from professional pollsters and prognosticators, the electoral count was right where I pegged it – Trump 312, Harris 226.

This election brings with it a gold mine of data that I will continue to sift through as results are finalized and subsequently certified.  Comparing it to the two previous elections, 2020 and 2016, will allow me to focus in on which counties need the most support in basic blocking and tackling, like voter registration and GOTV (get out the vote) efforts, but also which ones are likely most susceptible to election manipulation and thereby most likely to swing election outcomes.  You don’t need to be a wizard to realize I’m referring to places like Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, or Fulton County in Georgia, when I reach that level of granularity.

Yes, you heard that right.  You may be asking yourself, “If Trump won, doesn’t that mean elections aren’t as bad off as we thought they were?”

Remember, in 2020, Trump only “lost” the election by 42,918 ballots in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona combined.  Had he carried those three, he’d have knotted a 269-269 Electoral College tie and sent the race to the U.S. House for a contingent election.  Those Biden margins were achieved with late-night dumps in Wisconsin in the wee hours of November 4^th, 2020, and by days of sorting, shifting, and padding in Arizona and Georgia.  Trump’s echoing of the phrase “too big to rig” for the past two years is an indication that he knew he was going to have to win a rigged game this year to return to the White House.  All indications are that the playbook changed as soon as the media ran with the late, expectations-setting narrative that Harris would perhaps lose the national popular vote, but win the Electoral College by holding Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.  To avoid the scrutiny of Harris sitting on a ridiculous vote total surpassing 81 million, but having her win the Presidency, requires the ballot stuffing game to lay low in Florida, Texas, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and California, along with other states, where President Trump has made major advances from his prior margins.

This strategy has resulted in a move of roughly six points to the right nationally as votes stand right now, but less than two points in Wisconsin (Trump +1.0%), which hasn’t been as far away from Iowa (Trump +13.2%) in presidential margin since Franklin Roosevelt’s first reelection campaign in 1936.  Be advised, I will take massive heat for this, being a sore winner who can’t even be happy I made a perfect Electoral College prediction, and I will take it from my own side.  The media will decry me as a grifter who must keep my scam alive to survive economically on the backs of gullible conspiracy theorists.  I could care less.

Since the race was called for Trump on Election Night, four Senate seats that were destined to run with Trump’s momentum have fallen:

·      Eric Hovde, Wisconsin

·      Mike Rogers, Michigan

·      Sam Brown, Nevada

·      Kari Lake, Arizona

Only Dave McCormick escaped the late ballot counts in Pennsylvania, and even his imminent victory is being challenged by the infamous Marc Elias himself.  Hovde’s race in Wisconsin was undoubtedly ripped off by same-day registration tactics that managed to push Harris above Biden’s vote total in the Badger State, despite major regression in adjacent Iowa.  Rogers’ race fell in the middle of the night once Trump supporters were filled with glee.  Brown’s race fell to the limitless supply of late mail ballots found in the two major counties in Nevada that contribute seven out of every eight votes statewide.  Finally, Lake’s race was called last night after days of shuffling ballots, delaying vote dumps, and running the least transparent and least efficient elections in the entire union, which cast doubt upon Ruben Gallego’s “victory” even if the race is squeaky clean – which is highly doubtful.

But Captain K, if elections are manipulated, how did Trump win?

My belief is that there was no existing narrative in the face of massive momentum, gains with minorities, and incumbent party resentment that would have coincided with the same outcome that we saw in 2020.  While Trump, in my estimation, had the votes to win in 2020, he did not have the narrative in his favor to win; therefore, the unrealistic, utterly insane ballot counts stood up and resisted all challenges.  This time, with it so obvious Trump was destined to defeat perhaps the most incompetent Democrat nominee of all time, an election theft would not have been tolerated.  Trump commanded all aspects of the narrative battle raging in this country, from defeating lawfare, dodging bullets, and appearing on Joe Rogan, all the way to forging alliances with Elon Musk and shoveling fries at McDonald’s.  It also appears that I was correct in my assessment that Harris was largely on her own in Michigan and Pennsylvania, and was therefore unable to benefit from the ballot harvesting apparatuses Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro, 2028 Democrat presidential hopefuls, enjoy as respective governors of those states.

If this logic is correct, then the best play for preserving a corrupt elections system is to allow Trump to have his time in the White House, surround him with weak majorities now and jam him up in courts, and let him go back out to pasture in early 2029 after the 2026 midterms are fully manipulated – especially since there is no sentimental heir apparent to Trump that will fully invigorate the American populist movement yet.  What are we going to do?  Say we don’t accept the results of the 2024 election because of down ballot cheating, which has Republicans on pace to barely squeak out a U.S. House majority if fortunate?

In my most honest observation, and while I cannot condone the injustice of electoral manipulation, the fact that Trump won and our elections were still a third-world horror show is the best-case long term for permanently fixing our elections.  Had Trump swept into power with 57 Senate seats and a huge House majority, many would have looked the other way at the rotten elections system that renders more than 200 electoral votes permanently “blue” and the U.S. House and Senate incapable of providing a strong enough GOP majority to get anything done through the legislative branch of government.  Arizona’s election administration is so bad that it demands remedy.  Imagine if Trump had won Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nevada, but lost Pennsylvania and Michigan.  We would have been embroiled in domestic chaos for days waiting for Arizona to decide the race, with every reason to step in and manipulate the news cycle and the results as they’ve done in their 2018, 2020, and 2022 races.

This leaves us with one option – to press and influence the new Trump administration to fully pursue federal election remediation by any means necessary and to prosecute the living hell out of corrupt state officials who disenfranchise their fellow Americans by delegitimizing the electoral process.  Like Mel Gibson’s character Captain Benjamin Martin said in The Patriot – “aim small, miss small.”  I’ve been to nearly every state since 2021 and understand the election particulars of each to the finest detail.  The incoming data from the 2024 presidential election is extremely valuable even where it isn’t what we want to see; take Washington State for instance.  That state is so crippled by its mail-in balloting failures that there is no pathway to victory there until drastic measures are taken, perhaps by the Trump administration and his DOJ.

To me, “aim small, miss small” means:

Prioritizing states.

If your state is in green as a “low priority” election integrity state, it doesn’t mean all is well (in fact, for states like California, quite the opposite is true, and Mitch, you don’t need to get upset when you read this), and it doesn’t mean I don’t care about your state.  It means resources are finite and energy is limited to impact these states drastically in the near term – specifically, the 2026 House and Senate races, and the 2028 Electoral College and down ballot races).  If we can get past this decade intact electorally, then the 2030s may bring about a Republican boom with the continued shifting of minorities and the white working-class, plus the reapportionment of electoral votes that will drastically cripple Democrat hopes.  Considering all political movement and shifting in 2024, these are the 10 most crucial states for election reform efforts (in no order):

·      Arizona, Trump +6.4%

·      Nevada, Trump +3.1%

·      Georgia, Trump +2.2%

·      North Carolina, Trump +3.4%

·      Wisconsin, Trump +1.0%

·      Michigan, Trump +1.4%

·      Pennsylvania, Trump +2.1%

·      New Jersey, Harris +5.5%

·      New Hampshire, Harris +2.8%

·      Virginia, Harris +5.4%

Solidifying these states provides a GOP starting position of 312 electoral votes in 2028 (more in 2032) and brings in three potential flips in New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Virginia if trends persist.  Intermediate states in yellow are worth working on in the event we make enough federal election reforms to force states into using Voter ID, and if enough progress can be made to restrict the corrupt mail-in voting system that is responsible for creating blue states.

If you don’t have the stomach to pursue these reforms from the position of we won, and we want change, then we will find ourselves in this position once again before the end of the decade, suffering under elections dying for lack of transparency and media narratives driving outcomes, not actual votes from real voters.  Each state has its own election equation that, if remedied, will bring about elections as smooth as Florida’s.  Arizona’s is lack of transparency and fidelity of ballot batch data.  Nevada’s is the ability of large counties to amass mail ballots long after Election Day.  Wisconsin’s is same-day voter registration.  Concentrated efforts of all types (legislative, grassroots, media) are required to level the playing field in all states engaging in unfair and nontransparent practices, and that work begins right now.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.