Election 2020 will go down as the moment something changed for the worse across several states and wrecked America’s faith that our elections are clean and fair.

President Donald Trump jumped out to vote leads in several states despite Democrats doing everything they could to game the election in the prior weeks. They had terrified millions of Americans into fearing going to church, getting a bite out to eat, and of course standing in line to cast their votes. Even with social distancing and unprecedented cleaning procedures to keep everyone safe, the propaganda worked. Fear is one of humanity’s most basic motivators. Millions voted by mail for the first time, trusting a U.S. Postal Service whose union had endorsed Biden, with their sacred franchise.

While the blue-state Democrats terrorized America on one hand, on the other hand, they pulled out every trick they had been saving up to make mail-in voting a standard in as many of their states as possible. In swing-state Pennsylvania, for instance, Democrats made it so that mail-in ballots didn’t need to be postmarked by Nov. 3 -- and signatures didn’t even need to match -- for a vote to be declared valid.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro, sounding like a Bolivian junta leader, even declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the Keystone State -- days before a single ballot had even been counted. That tweet was Shapiro and his fellow Democrats’ Halloween trick on America, disenfranchising millions of voters coast to coast, because Pennsylvania is the keystone to both parties’ electoral hopes.

All of this invites blatant election tampering that would have made Saddam Hussein blush. Election security experts agree that of all the vulnerabilities any election can have, mail-in ballots provide the most opportunities for mischief. Yet Democrats had used the COVID to cloak their longstanding intention to force a vast and unproven mail-in ballot regime across much of the country.

The crisis had come, don't let it go to waste.

Democrat election officials in blue states then used Election Night to destroy what was left of Americans’ faith in our ability to hold fair and free elections.

Trump had leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia (a red state, but with Democrats in control of its largest city, Atlanta), North Carolina, and Arizona (a red state but similar to Georgia with its population centers in Democrat hands). Nevada was in the mix too, stung on the Vegas Strip by the Democrats’ shutdowns and shenanigans.

But almost as if they were dominoes tipped by the same sly hand, one by one the blue states simply stopped counting votes.

If they gave a reason at all, it was laughably vague. Most just declined to give a reason. They just... stopped. 

On Election Night they had one job. But the blue states, like synchronized swimmers, all gave the same little kicks and swings and stopped counting.

Meanwhile, the networks started calling close states -- even ones in which Trump led at the time -- for Biden. Networks called Virginia for Biden when less than 1% of the vote was in. They called Arizona while votes were still being cast and Republican counties’ votes were still out. They left Texas up for grabs for hours, despite the fact that the Lone Star State would stay as red as ever. Democrat and media darling Wendy Davis found that out the hard way -- again -- losing her bid to join Nancy Pelosi in Congress. In fact, Democrats lost ground in the House, failed to take the Senate, and Republicans easily won Ohio, but we’re supposed to believe the same voters also decided doddering leftist puppet Joe would make a better president than the successful Trump? 

Networks never called Pennsylvania for Trump despite having more than a 700,000-vote lead at one point.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city, was at the heart of the vote count work stoppage. It was as if the City of Brotherly Love was waiting to see what the vote would total across the rural Republican parts of the state so that it could magically provide enough votes to give the state’s 20 electoral votes to Biden. 

That’s called cheating. 

In past years, Americans would head overseas to monitor elections in developing countries. We were the gold standard for election integrity, the envy of the world.

The blue states made a mockery of all of that during the 2020 election. American Idol can count 130 million votes in a flash but these blue states can’t? Florida can, but Michigan can't? Give me a break.

They stopped counting when they felt like it, blunting the momentum of a candidate they opposed and provided themselves opportunities aplenty to cheat their way to power. Overnight, when they had supposedly stopped counting, blue states magically “found” troves of votes, that all just happened to be cast for Biden -- which is so statistically improbable as to be nearly impossible. Yet we’re supposed to believe it happened in Michigan and Wisconsin -- states Trump won in 2016. 

The nation that once pulled banana republics out of the mire of election corruption is now plagued with blue-state banana republics. Millions of Americans will remember this, and never ever trust elections again. These blue-state Mugabe-like fiefdoms are toxic and undermine everything America stands for. Trump must now fight for every legal vote, win or lose, to restore some faith in a system the Democrats have all but destroyed. 

A.J. Rice is CEO of Publius PR, a premier communications firm in Washington D.C. Rice is a brand manager, star-whisperer and auteur media influencer, who has produced or promoted Laura Ingraham, Donald Trump Jr., Judge Jeanine Pirro, Newt Gingrich, Monica Crowley, Charles Krauthammer, Alan Dershowitz, Pete Hegseth, Steve Hilton, Victor Davis Hanson, and many others. Find out more at publiuspr.com. 

Image: Bicentennial Museum