Abstract

The 2020 U.S. Presidential election may have been the most contentious election in American history.  While President-elect Joseph Biden was the decided winner, with almost 8 million more popular votes and a decisive victory in the electoral college, President Trump began claiming election fraud would occur almost a year before the election.  In fact, Trump and his supporters have continued to suggest that the results of the election are somehow illegitimate and have contested them in various ways including over 60 lawsuits, all of which were dismissed.  Despite the allegations of election fraud, there has been no credible evidence of any type of widespread election fraud that would change the outcome of the election.  However, a group of Trump-supporting Republican members of Congress, in both the House and the Senate, announced their intention to refuse to certify electoral votes from the states where they believe election fraud occurred.  

Essay Titles

1.  Trump’s Coup Attempt

2.  Breaking a Tradition of More than Two Centuries of Peaceful Transitions of Power

3.  Was the Election Stolen?

Essay Topics

1.  What role has disinformation played in President Trump’s campaign to avoid a peaceful transition of power to President-Elect Biden? 

2.  How the seditious attack on the capitol was predictable, even if surprising, and who should be charged with orchestrating the attack. 

Essay Outline

I. Introduction

A. 2020 Presidential Election Candidates

B. Complications from COVID-19

C. Allegations of fraud

D. Efforts to keep people from voting

E. Election results 

F. Efforts to overturn results

G. Thesis statement.  

II. 2020 Presidential Election Candidates

A. Donald Trump

B. Joe Biden...

Essay Title: Joe Biden Will Be Inaugurated, but Will We Still Be America? 

Hook Sentence: With less than two weeks until Joe Biden’s inauguration, the day after his failed coup attempt, and amid calls for his removal via impeachment or the 25th Amendment, President Trump appears increasingly unhinged.  Will the United States survive the next two weeks?   

Introduction

The 2020 Presidential election may become the most infamous election in U.S. history.  At first glance, the contest would not seem that unusual.  The two major candidates were from the country’s two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.  The Republican candidate, Donald Trump, was the current President of the United States, while the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, was both a former Senator and former Vice-President under President Barack Obama.  However, 2020 was also the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made everything more complicated, including campaigning and the elections.  The changes that states made in order to accommodate people who could not all safely vote in person under existing rules served as one of the basis for allegations of election fraud, which Trump began making before the first vote was even cast.  In addition to attempting to delegitimize election results, Trump and various state Republican parties attempted to prevent people from voting, purging thousands from voter rolls and shutting down polling places.  These efforts even extended to installing a Postmaster General who would intentionally slow down the mail in the months leading up to the election. Despite these efforts, Joe Biden obtained a decisive victory in the election, winning it by well over 7 million popular votes and with 306 electoral votes to 232 votes for President Trump.  President Trump and several of his proxies began filing lawsuits challenging the election results, but none were successful.  Trump then began exploring other ways to prevent Biden being certified as the winner of the election, including a certification-day rally where he said he would lead a group of insurgents to the capitol to change the outcome.  Despite these threats, Biden was certified as the new President in the early morning hours of January 7, 2021 and will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.  

Thesis Statement

Although Biden has been certified as the next President and will be inaugurated, there are questions about what the intervening two weeks mean for the country, including whether President Trump will be removed via impeachment or the 25th Amendment prior to the end of his term or face criminal liability for his role in the insurrection afterwards. 

Body 

The 2020 Presidential election was a contest between Republican incumbent President Donald Trump and Democratic contender Joe Biden.  The race began in a more contentious manner than many previous presidential elections for several reasons.  Donald Trump had inspired people to respond in highly emotional ways to him, which resulted in the formation of a dedicated group of Trump supporters, a group of Republicans who highly disliked him but voted for him out of party loyalty, a group of Republicans who openly disavowed him and called upon others to do the same, and a group of Democrats who determined to vote for whoever one their primary in an effort to get Trump out of office. Trump’s lack of popularity among his detractors was the result of a number of factors, from his being impeached in early 2020 to his unwillingness to step forward as a leader during the coronavirus pandemic.  Biden was not seen as the most popular candidate at the beginning of the Democratic primaries, but he was seen as the one most likely to defeat Trump and to begin healing some of the intense division that was the result of the Trump administration.

Despite the efforts to hinder voters, particularly Democratic voters, the results in the 2020 election ended up being decisively in favor of Joe Biden.  While he did...

…the beginning of the Democratic primaries, but he was seen as the one most likely to defeat Trump and to begin healing some of the intense division that was the result of the Trump administration.

Despite the efforts to hinder voters, particularly Democratic voters, the results in the 2020 election ended up being decisively in favor of Joe Biden.  While he did not win all of the states where polls showed him being a potential winner, such as Texas, which was considered a toss-up for the first time in decades, he did carry states like Georgia, which had not voted for a Democrat for President in over two generations.  However, the margins of victory in many states was relatively slim.  In addition, because many Biden supporters casts their ballots by mail, some of the results did not come in until long after the November 3, 2020 election day.  This meant that people could not really predict the overall winner of the election until November 7th, when ABC News, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, and The New York Times all projected him to be the winner of the 2020 presidential election, based on estimates that he would win the state of Pennsylvania, taking him over the 270 electoral vote threshold (Ballotpedia, 2021).  Arizona and Georgia were called later, but Biden won them, as well.  However, the margin in Georgia was small enough to trigger a hand recount, which was not completed until November 24 (Ballotpedia, 2021). 

Despite a decisive victory for Biden, Trump refused to acknowledge that Biden had won.   He refused to commit to the idea of a peaceful transition even before most states had begun their early voting process.  In fact, on September 24, 2020 he stated that there would be no transfer of power, only a continuation of power (Cilizza, 2021).  His position was that unless he won the election it would be illegitimate.  He did not win the election, so he began immediately contesting the results. 

Conclusion

It is actually impossible to write a conclusion to this scenario, at this time.  The Capitol Police failed to arrest many of the terrorists who attacked the capitol.  Biden was certified, but with two weeks to the inauguration, most of the nation is wondering what else Trump is going to try to do to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.  Politicians and citizens from both sides of the political spectrum, including many of Trump’s former cabinet members, are calling for Trump’s removal from office, but an alarming 45% of Republican voters still believe the election was fraudulent and some of those people even support the terrorist attack on the Congress.  As of January 7, 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy…