Fight to Vote: A revolt against Trump’s election denialism

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter

Good morning Fight to Vote readers,

As the Covid-19 pandemic rages across the country, so too are officials and citizens sick of Donald Trump and his Republican allies undermining the election.

In three key states that flipped for Democrats, the fight over election results has continued amid lawsuits and disinformation. As Republicans attempt to finagle any last votes – despite the fact that they lost overwhelmingly – it’s clear that some have lost patience.

‘The Trump stain’

In Wayne county, Michigan, local Republican officials initially refused to confirm the election results in Detroit, a majority-Black city that largely favored Joe Biden. The backlash directed at those officials was fierce.

“The Trump stain, the stain of racism that you, William Hartmann and Monica Palmer, have covered yourself in, is going to follow you throughout history,” said Ned Staebler, a business owner in the county.

In Georgia, where the state performed a manual recount because of the close race, the normally staid secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, said other Republicans such as South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and the Georgia Senate candidate Doug Collins were pressuring him to throw out legal ballots.

“I’m an engineer. We look at numbers. We look at hard data,” Raffensperger said. “I can’t help it that a failed candidate like Collins is running around lying to everyone. He’s a liar.”

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is pouring $3m into a partial recount of the votes in two Wisconsin counties. The president claims his observers were not stationed close enough to the ballot count to spot mistakes. Local officials disagreed.

“No, no, that’s not why they were chosen,” the Milwaukee mayor, Tom Barrett, said of the counties chosen for recounts. “They were chosen because they are the two counties that have a very high percentage of Democratic voters. That’s 100% why they were chosen.”

Meanwhile, Trump has continued firing anybody who stands up to him.

Say goodbye to Chris Krebs

On Tuesday night, the president fired Chris Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity chief in charge of securing the election. On Monday, Krebs had said that the election was not compromised by voter fraud, as Trump has charged.

Another DHS cybersecurity official, Bryan Ware, is also resigning from the department.

But there is reason to give thanks

With Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s crucial to think about the power of Native voters – one of the last groups in the US to gain the right to vote. This year, they played a key role in Biden’s win in states such as Arizona and Wisconsin. For example, the margin in Arizona between Biden and Trump was 10,377 as of Monday. There were 67,000 eligible voters on the Navajo Nation, which heavily supported Biden.

Turnout was also high despite the extensive hurdles many Native Americans face when it comes to casting a ballot on rural reservation land.

I’ll leave you with this gem: the whole video of Ned Staebler’s comment to Wayne county officials.