Jill ‘Quixote’ Stein tilting at imaginary vote count windmills

I hate to cast aspersion on the improbable when we are living with the absurdity that is “President-elect Trump,” but the Hillary Clinton supporters cheering on Jill Stein’s recount efforts have taken a vacation from reality.

I was a resident of Washington state in 2004 when Democrat Christine Gregoire stole the gubernatorial election from Republican Dino Rossi. Rossi was initially declared the winner by 261 votes. It took not one but two recounts before victory was declared for Gregoire by 133 votes (with the help of shenanigans like counting a “Christine Rossi” write-in ballot for Gregoire). Two highly contentious, heavily-scrutinized recounts only managed to move the final tally by about 400 votes.

{mosads}Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by 70,000 votes, Wisconsin by 22,500 votes, and Michigan by 10,500 votes. Hillary would have to win all three of those states to claim victory in the electoral college, and we’ve just established that Democrats have to move mountains to change an election tally by even a few hundred votes. Yet Jill Stein and her Clinton-supporting enablers would have you believe that they can somehow disappear over 100,000 Trump votes and turn the election in Ms. Clinton’s favor.

(Note that I say “Clinton-supporting enablers” because Ms. Stein just raised almost twice the money that she spent on her entire presidential campaign in a matter of days. I’m pretty sure those funds didn’t come primarily from classic Green Party supporters. I’m also pretty sure that money would have been better spent helping down-ballot Democrats win their state races in 2018.)

Heba Abedin — sister of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin — shared a chain message urging friends on Facebook to contact the Department of Justice and ask them to audit the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania because a “shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary . . . is all that is Needed to Win.”

To think that 55,000 votes could be so easily switched from one candidate to another is either alarming audacity or cringe-worthy ignorance coming from someone so well-connected to the Clintons. Changing votes from one candidate to another after they’ve been cast is what’s normally known as “fraud,” which Democrats never, ever encourage nor engage in, I am told.

However, given that Ms. Abedin thinks the DoJ performs such audits based on the number of people who call in, as if this were voting on American Idol, I’m going to say that her sin here is “ignorance.”

Some say that we need the recounts in order to insure the integrity of this election and put the losing side at peace with the results. But the integrity of this election wasn’t truly in question (Donald Trump’s outrageous pre-election claims of “rigging” notwithstanding) until Hillary Clinton supporters began floating bizarre conspiracy theories to justify taking a second look at the Rust Belt.

Hard evidence for voting anomalies in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania has ranged from scant to nonexistent. The only thing anomalous about those states is that a Republican candidate won them fair-and-square for the first time since the 80s.

Besides, it was just last month that Hillary Clinton supporters were repeatedly chanting “YOU WON” at former vice-president Al Gore while Ms. Clinton looked on approvingly. You’ll recall that there was a recount in Florida back in 2000 (and the one that Mr. Gore requested that was blocked by the Supreme Court wouldn’t have given him the state). Yet people still seem to regard the Bush presidency as illegitimate. I thought recounts were supposed to put the losing side at peace?

Dejected Hillary Clinton supporters keep murmuring about how Ms. Clinton “won” the popular vote, making absurd calls for her to be declared the winner based on that. Where were these wizards of math when the Chicago Cubs were declared the 2016 World Series Champions in spite of scoring fewer runs than the Cleveland Indians over the course of the series?

They didn’t speak up because they knew that would have been ridiculous, and they’re being just as ridiculous now. It’s irrelevant that Ms. Clinton got more votes overall because that isn’t how winners are decided nor is it how the game is played.

It may be cliché, but it’s time to suck it up, buttercup. Barring some massive, stunning, and unprecedented upset in the electoral college, President-Elect Trump really is President-elect Trump.

If you don’t like that (and I know I don’t), stop tilting at windmills and start addressing the problems that delivered the presidency to Trump in the first place.

Bridget Jack Jeffries likes to recount angry comments on her articles. Keep up with her tally on Twitter or GAB.