Dear Emily Murphy and GSA,

My name is Pastor D.M. Richardson and I’m an American citizen who voted in the recent 2020 election. I am disheartened to learn that the funds for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris transition haven’t been released yet. The country continues to live in limbo based on an assumption without evidence that there has been massive, wide-scale voter fraud in America’s presidential 2020 election.

what we know

Here’s what we know. We know that the votes have been counted in many states. And we know that, despite the close margins, only one of the two opponents can come out ahead. We don’t expect there to be an exact tie between President Trump and President-Elect Joe Biden, so only one can win. And President-Elect Joe Biden has come out on top in quite a few states. He has also grabbed the majority of electoral votes, which is what places him ahead of Donald Trump. It’s easy to understand why Fox, CNN, and other news stations have declared Biden to be President-Elect and Kamala Harris Madame Vice President-Elect.

It only takes 270 electoral votes to cross the finish line to the White House. Biden has done that. He had 253 votes before he won Pennsylvania. The last votes coming in from Pennsylvania were overwhelmingly Democratic, and those votes came from places such as Philadelphia, which President Trump himself said in a recent statement is heavily Democrat.

When Biden was declared the winner of Pennsylvania (or the Commonwealth, as many say), Biden then had 273 votes and had crossed the 270-count threshold for the Presidency. He could’ve crossed the threshold with states such as Nevada (6 electoral votes) and Arizona (11 electoral votes). Biden would’ve had 17 more votes when, added to 253 votes, would’ve given him 270 electoral votes exactly. So Biden is clearly President-Elect and Kamala Harris is Vice President-Elect. The math is clear.

why did trump lose the 2020 election?

President Trump lost the 2020 election because, to be frank, a few things.

More americans voted

More Americans voted in this year’s election. The reason? As opposed to year’s past, states sent out mail-in ballots or absentee ballots to registered American citizens due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With health experts and doctors warning Americans to social distance and to not travel except to necessary places, some Americans (presumably, the elderly and sick) chose to stay home. There are many elderly citizens who got out and voted anyway, but there are those who did stay home to stay safe. They voted at home and mailed their ballots by way of US mail. The US Postal Service (USPS) received their ballots and had a responsibility to mail those ballots in.

Mail-in ballots ramped up because of the national, dare I say, worldwide health crisis. And, as a result, ballots came in from all corners of the country. As opposed to elections past where some Americans just refused to visit the ballot box, Americans were made aware of another option this year as a workaround to voting in the pandemic. And after it became clear that the USPS was being prevented from doing their job (it’s not their fault they were held up), some citizens decided to visit the polls and vote in-person anyway.

Percentages look smaller when the voting pool is larger. And in this case, voters voted in large numbers. Research says that somewhere between 140 million and 160 million Americans voted, which is the largest voting pool in at least the past 50 years. So when it comes to winning states, 40% of the voting pool in 2016 isn’t the same as 40% of the voting pool in 2020. And when the voting pool increases, percentages can get larger or smaller depending on the count. This is the same when it comes to not only national count but also state counts.

president trump lost states

The reality is that Trump lost states such as Arizona and Georgia, which appear to have turned blue. Additionally, he also lost the Blue Wall, the Democratic voting bloc of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And when you lose states, you lose electoral votes. President Trump needed to maintain the states that gave him the win in 2016. He could’ve gained other states in 2020, but unfortunately, he did not.

what about voter fraud?

What about voter fraud? President Trump has filed his lawsuit alleging that dead persons voted in the election, ballots were burned, and so on. So far, there has been no proof of voter fraud, yet Trump has proceeded with his lawsuits in states instead of accepting the 2020 election results. There are at least 3 lawsuits that have been tossed out due to absence of evidence. In Georgia, Trump filed a lawsuit against 53 ballots because he says that they arrived after 7PM on Election Day. The lawsuit was dismissed due to lack of evidence.

A video on social media has surfaced of someone burning ballots, but there are no faces shown. And the ballots in question could be photocopies of one sample ballot. No witnesses have come forward to validate the video, and there’s very little likelihood they will. And the ballots in question could have been copies of a sample ballot. The ballots in the video and photos surfacing don’t even look identical to official voting ballots. I requested an absentee ballot before voting in person, so I can verify the ballots in the video and photos (released by Eric Trump, no less) are sample ballots, not official ballots. And none of the ballots looked filled in at all, so no filled-out voter ballot has been tossed. There is no evidence.

From the lawsuits that have been dismissed, and the lawsuits that are pending, it’s clear that there’s no evidence of voter fraud.

if we want to investigate fraud, let’s look back to 2016

President Trump continues to claim that the integrity of the 2020 election is at stake, but 2016 will forever remain the election that compromised election integrity. While Trump insists there was no collusion in 2016 with Russian intelligence, the 1,000-page, 2019 Senate report “showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin,” including Paul Manafort’s associate Konstantin V. Kilimnik,” a Russian intelligence officer, according to the New York Times.

Despite the connections between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin, Trump says there was no collusion, but I can make the claim that, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” It’s interesting that he wants to claim voter fraud in the 2020 election, but why not care about election integrity in the 2016 election? He didn’t seem to care about the lines crossed with extensive contacts between American and Russian officials. If he didn’t declare an investigation into that, if he didn’t believe voter fraud occurred then, why make a case now when there’s basically no evidence of fraud?

the real truth behind Voter fraud claims

What is the real truth behind voter fraud claims? President Trump lost the election.

I understand that Trump doesn’t like to lose. He said some days before Biden was declared President-Elect that losing is hard for him, for anyone. That’s true. No one likes to lose the election. None of the past Presidents that have lost their elections were happy about it. I’ve never seen anyone jumping for joy after they lost a presidential election.

And yet, all those presidents stepped up to the plate, admitted their defeat, and conceded their elections. Why? Because that’s part of what it means to humbly bow to the will of the people in a democracy.

I understand that President Trump is still the nation’s president. And I understand that he is still President Trump, even after he exits office on January 20, 2021.

But he will have to exit office. He has lost this election, fair and square. We live in a democracy, where the will of the people rules. We don’t live in a dictatorship. President Trump didn’t choose himself to be president; he won by way of the Electoral College. He didn’t win the popular vote in 2016, yet still got to be President. In many ways, it appears to some anti-Trump voters that Trump possibly cheated to garner his win then. And yet, those same folks put aside their differences to soldier through the past 4 years and to accept his presidency as much as possible.

These voters are asking Pesident Trump to do the same now.

And I’m humbly asking you to release the transition funds so that President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris can transition into their upcoming leadership roles. By continuing to honor the possibility of a second Trump term, you’re not doing President Trump any favors.

He has accepted victory, but now it’s time for him to accept defeat. As the nation’s leader, he should be the example he expects of others. Refusing to acknowledge President-Elect Biden and Vice Present-Elect Harris is something I would expect of a stubborn celebrity — but not the POTUS. His current pouting spell is not leading the nation. Release the transition funds so that Biden and Harris can get started on their important work of leading the country in 2021.

If he wants to retain any dignity at all, it’s time to stop this witch hunt and face the facts. I realize that he and his voter base discount science, numbers, facts, and data, but this is all part of what the Bible means when it says “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11, NKJV). It’s time for President Trump to put away his childish pouting, and it’s time for you to release the funds.

Sincerely,

Pastor D.M. Richardson

The Essential Church

November 11, 2020