The “left-leaning but reasonable” Jonathan Turley who does not believe “this election was rigged and stolen” does believe there needs to be a real Federal Commission on the 2020 Election.
Writes Turley, “Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.”
He states three reasons for such a commission:
- First, and most important, this was an unprecedented election in the reliance of mail-in voting and the use of new voting systems and procedures. We need to review how that worked down to the smallest precincts and hamlets.
- Second, possibly tens of millions of voters believe that this election was rigged and stolen. I am not one of them. However, the integrity of our elections depends on the faith of the electorate.
- Roughly 40% of that electorate have lingering doubts about whether their votes actually matter. Most of the cases challenging the election were not decided on the merits. Indeed, it seems they haven’t even been allowed for discovery. Instead, they were largely dismissed on jurisdictional or standing groups or under the “laches” doctrine that they were brought too late. Those allegations need to be conclusively proven or disproven in the interests of the country.
- Third, there were problems. There was not proof of systemic fraud or irregularities, but there were problems of uncounted votes, loss of key custodial information and key differences in the rules governing voting and tabulations.