Oh boy. The ink on the February 1 Iowa caucus results had hardly dried before Republican presidential contender Donald Trump had called for a do-over of the Iowa vote.
Trump, who came in second to Republican presidential contender Senator Ted Cruz, wants a new election, accusing Cruz of fraud.
The fraud charge comes as a result of Cruz campaign operatives telling voters that Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. Carson is not dropping out the race.
Carson is not dropping out and it is despicable (though not surprising) that the Cruz campaign would pass on this incorrect information to its grassroots leaders in Iowa on election night. Campaign officials passed on CNN information stating that Carson was not continuing to New Hampshire and South Carolina, but then failed to pass on the updated information when the Carson campaign clarified that he was staying in the race.
So the Cruz team is despicable. What else is new? These are the same people who put out an official looking Big Brother-ish mailer to Iowans suggesting that the state tracks and grades individual voters, earning the campaign a rebuke from the Iowa secretary of state.
Correct – these are inappropriate actions. They are despicable and they are wrong but they do not warrant a do-over. Whether or not Cruz “stole Iowa” and “illegally won” as Trump tweeted, there are no do-overs in our democracy.
There are recounts – as we saw in 2000 in Bush vs. Gore when the state of Florida so badly bungled its voting and vote counting (hanging chads, pregnant chads and so forth) that the Supreme Court of the United States had to step in and decide the election.
If ever there were an election that should have been done over, it would have been the state of Florida’s 2000 presidential election.
Trump’s bloviating on social media and in public about a do-over demonstrates his colossal lack of awareness of how elections work in this country.
