Cornyn, Cruz, other Texans must renounce Trump’s claim of vast election conspiracy

President Donald Trump has leveled charges of vast fraud in several battleground states, supposedly aimed at usurping a victory that he declares he has won.

It’s a grave accusation of a grand conspiracy. The problem is, he and his team have yet to produce evidence that it’s true. Absent that, the president’s words threaten to baselessly undermine the mechanics of our democracy and give millions of Americans cause to believe a terrible crime has been committed.

Texas Republicans in Congress who have stood with Trump must make clear that this is unacceptable. They should publicly express confidence in our system.

At a minimum, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Reps. Kay Granger of Fort Worth and Ron Wright of Arlington, should call on the president publicly to release evidence of fraud, if his campaign has it. Rep. Roger Williams of Austin has already, unfortunately, alleged mass corruption, stirring up his Twitter followers without elaborating or providing any proof. (The social media company briefly suspended the congressman’s account.)

Trump said Thursday that “if you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” He hinted that votes being counted late in the process were inherently suspect. He suggested that polls were intentionally rigged against him. He said Democrats are in charge of vote counting in each of the remaining disputed states, which is false.

Perhaps most incredibly, the president expressed wonderment that mail-in ballots were going heavily for Democrat Joe Biden. After he and other Republicans spent months urging their followers to vote in person, what did he expect?

We’ve asked the senators and local Republican representatives about the president’s accusations, and they have yet to respond. Cornyn, to his credit, has retweeted Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s call for all legal votes to be counted.

Cruz has raised the issue of Republican vote-counting observers being legally barred from watching the process, though the president’s campaign has already litigated that issue.

“Republican poll watchers were denied meaningful access to the ballot processing and counting process in Philadelphia, posing a direct threat to the integrity of our elections,” his office said in a written statement. “That’s why a Pennsylvania court ordered that observers must be allowed within six feet of all aspects of the ballot counting process. As Senator Cruz has said, the American people have the right to expect votes will be counted fairly, with transparency, and not in secret.”

Cornyn, in a now-famous interview with the Star-Telegram Editorial Board, explained that he has learned it’s more effective to express disagreement with Trump in private. We agree that persuading Trump is impossible if you bawl him out in public.

This time, though, the moment is too big. It’s not primarily about the president and what he believes. It’s also about the 70 million-plus people who voted for him. They deserve to have confidence that their votes weren’t improperly diluted.

As the president has warned of voter fraud throughout the campaign, his opponents have, characteristically, overstated their response. They seem to suggest that fraud doesn’t happen. It does, but at small scales. Fort Worth and Dallas have seen serious cases involving city council and school board races in recent years.

What doesn’t happen, though, is a vast, coordinated effort to overturn a presidential election in several states.

To believe that’s occurring, you must believe that hundreds of people are aware of it, but nothing has leaked -- which almost never happens in politics. You must believe Republicans in states such as Georgia and Arizona are in on the scam. You must believe that Democrats built an elaborate vote-rigging system but decided not to use it to expand their House majority or pick off enough Senate seats to win control.

In short, some secrets are too big to keep, and that would be one of them.

Counting the votes always takes days or weeks. Many Americans have the impression that the tally is done on election night, but that’s because the outcome is typically clear, races are called and most people stop paying attention. Even now in Texas, votes are still being counted; they’re just not likely to flip any races.

Every election has irregularities, but they are almost always the result of human error, not concerted efforts to change the outcome. There are legal processes in place to ensure an accurate, fair count and to settle disputes.

In Tarrant County, for instance, the Elections Office’s equipment couldn’t register thousands of mail-in ballots. The solution is a laborious process in which workers — pairs from different parties to prevent one person from having control — copy ballots so they can be read. It’s not ideal, but there’s been no evidence that these votes have been corrupted.

Cornyn, Cruz and their counterparts in the House delegation should consider, too, that speaking out now would be better for the Republican Party. If Trump has in fact lost, this episode will fade. And the GOP is in much better political shape than anyone anticipated. Voters across the country voted for Republicans in congressional races while rejecting Trump. The president inadvertently made this point Thursday when he outlined impressive GOP wins in the House, which defied experts’ projections.

One of the reasons the last four years have been so politically traumatic is that millions of Americans, egged on by partisans, refused to accept that the outcome of the 2016 election was legitimate. They blamed the Russians, voter suppression and Facebook, to name just a few.

If the other side does the same with the 2020 election, it could do irreparable harm to confidence in our democracy. Charges of fraud must be proved or denounced.

Texas Republicans, it’s time to step up.

This story was originally published November 6, 2020 at 11:38 AM.