On Election Night 2004, Republican centrist and gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi went to bed as the governor-elect of the state of Washington, having narrowly defeated far-left Democrat Christine Gregoire.  A statewide recount was completed weeks later; Rossi’s election victory was confirmed, and he was formally certified the winner on November 29, four long weeks after the election.

Christine Gregoire and the Democrat party refused to accept the results, “donating” $730,000 to the Washington State secretary of state to conduct yet another ballot recount.  Weeks later, in mid-December, election workers in Seattle’s King County and the Democrat party announced that hundreds of “lost” absentee ballots had mysteriously turned up.

Other counties in Washington suddenly began reporting lost ballots as “found.”  The vast majority of these found ballots were votes for Christine Gregoire.  The Republican party secured a legal injunction to stop the slow-motion theft of the governorship, but the Democrats countered by appealing directly to the Supreme Court of Washington State, which quickly ruled in favor of the Democrats and yet more vote-counting.

On December 21, seven weeks after the election, the Washington state Democrat party declared that Gregoire had nudged ahead of Rossi by eight votes and was the rightful winner of the governorship.  She was inaugurated on January 12, 2005. 

Four years later, on election night 2008, Republican Norm Coleman went to bed as the re-elected senator of Minnesota, having defeated an unfunny comedian named Al Franken.  Endless recounts ensued, as more and more ballots began turning up in unlikely places.

In late December, nearly two months after the election, the perennially butt-hurt Franken took the lead over Coleman for the first time, and the recounts came to a halt.  Despite Republican appeals, the Supreme Court of Minnesota sided with the Democrats, and Franken was inaugurated months later in 2009.

Rossi’s and Coleman’s election victories being overturned were fairly high-profile events at the time, but those events obscure many “smaller” congressional races whose Election Night results — GOP victories — were later reversed in favor of Democrats through endless counting and recounting of ballots, media pressure campaigns, and court rulings issued by partisan judges.  (Almost all judges are lawyers, and lawyers donate overwhelmingly to Democrats; thus, judges are not the impartial, apolitical arbiters they claim to be.)

Are these just examples of sour grapes from the GOP?  Far-right conspiracy theories and misinformation, like thinking of “Coach Walz” and getting a creepy Coach Sandusky vibe, or speculating why McDonald’s can’t confirm that Kamala Harris ever worked for them? 

If you’ve ever wondered how Democrats seemingly prevail in virtually all election recounts when the odds would logically be more in the 50-50 range, consider the odds of flipping a coin 100 times and having it come up heads even just 80 times.  According to most mathematical calculations, the odds would be roughly 2.4 billion to one.

Government officials, media, and other Democrat partisans would loudly point to the rare exception of Republican George W. Bush’s Supreme Court victory in his 2000 election recount win over Democrat Al Gore — but these same progressives omit the fact that Bush would’ve won under each and every recount scenario, including those insisted upon by Democrats.

Endless recounts; lost and found ballots; tranches of Democrat ballots showing up en masse when needed, like the Soviet Red Army turning the tide on the eastern front in World War Two; partisan lawyers, judges, and corrupt election officials; far-left media pressure campaigns; even the looming threat of urban riots.  All are part of a pro-Democrat thumb-on-the-scale fact pattern dating back decades. 

So what does all this tell us about 2024, and in particular the seven or so swing states where Harris and Trump are separated by roughly one point in the race for president? 

It tells us there will be recounts in those states, and every truthful, reality-based observer knows how recounts overwhelmingly tend to play out.

In the 1938 short story “Leiningen Versus the Ants,” the hero Leiningen overcomes astronomical odds, miraculously prevailing over endless waves of attacking ants. 

Can Donald Trump “pull a Leiningen” and overcome the voracious and deadly ants of the debunked news media, the government’s discredited intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the tens of millions of Democrat-voting vermin who wish Trump and his voters dead? 

As a collective, the army of ants has decided that we probably won’t know on election night.  Long counts and recounts are coming.

Todd and Erik Gregory are previous contributors to American Thinker.

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