President Trump Claims Bigfoot Voted for Hillary!

After almost a month in office, is is too soon to ask: Is President Trump operating under the influence of powerful hallucinogens?

We know Trump has seen huge inaugural crowds where none existed, spotted terrorists under every bed and claimed three to five million undocumented immigrants voted. Bigfoot in California, the Ghost of Christmas Future in New Hampshire and Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandfather in Virginia all showed up at the polls. 

In a fair election, Mr. Trump insisted he’d have won the popular vote, the electoral vote, and People magazine would have voted him “Sexiest Man Alive” every year for the last decade.

On the morning after the election Trump proclaimed that he was ahead in the popular vote and would remain so when all votes were tallied. The numbers kept piling up for Hillary and it became clear he would not finish ahead. Within days, he was tweeting, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” He tweeted again, “So why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias—big problem!”

(Big problem: A hallucinating President?)

Even after his inauguration, when Trump sat down for his first interview as President, he was still grumbling. David Muir of ABC News asked if it might not be dangerous to talk about millions of illegals voting, without...um...evidence.

“No. Not at all,” the leader of the greatest democracy in history replied, “because many people feel the way I do.”

“Believe me, those were Hillary voters,” Trump continued. “And if you look at it, they all voted for Hillary. They all voted for Hillary. They didn’t vote for me.” He singled out Virginia, California and New Hampshire as states where illegals marched to the polls in whole brigades and battalions.

Naturally, reporters set out to uncover the truth. Who saw Mr. Bigfoot and why did he vote for Clinton? Could it be he didn’t want to vote for a man who might gleefully grab Mrs. Bigfoot, you know where? “Virginia’s election was well administered by our 133 professional local registrars, with help from hundreds of election officials and volunteers who worked to guarantee a good experience for eligible Virginia voters,” state Commissioner of Elections Edgardo Cortés assured Fox News. “The election was fair and all votes cast by eligible voters were accurately counted.” 

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla labeled Trump’s allegations “absurd.” 

The New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State explained that there was no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud, but, yes, there were cases. Lorin Schneider Jr. did vote illegally in 2008 and 2012.

Alas, for President Trump, Schneider was not an illegal immigrant.

As far as Trump was concerned, it didn’t matter what election officials said, not even when The New York Times contacted officials in all fifty states, and not one cited evidence of widespread fraud, and no one had seen the Ghost of Christmas Future floating up to cast a ballot.

I decided to check out a few facts myself. First, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has declined from 12.2 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2014. According to a Pew Research report, illegals spread across all fifty states. Vermont and North Dakota have a few. California has roughly 2,350,000, Texas 1,650,000. Florida has 850,000, Virginia, 300,000, New Hampshire 10,000.

A sensible person, with the math and reasoning skills of a second grader, might immediately wonder about Trump’s complaints. First, who organized this massive turnout of as many as five million illegals? Did those who showed at the polls impersonate voters who were already dead? Did Juan, who picked apples in Virginia, but spoke little English, show up and vote as Shamus O’Brien?

Secondly, why would any illegal risk voting in California? Clinton crushed Trump in the Golden State, winning 8,754,000 votes (rounded off), or 61.7%. Trump pulled in 4,484,000 votes, or 31.6%. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein combined for 758,000 and Bernie Sanders had 79,000 write-in votes.

Even a cursory glance at previous elections indicates nothing untoward. Trump did poorly, compared to Mitt Romney and John McCain and far worse than George W. Bush in 2004. In California the vote totals indicated that Trump’s problem was Trump: 

2012   Obama 7,854,285 (60.2%)              Romney 4,839,958 (37.1)

2008   Obama 8,274,473 (61)                     McCain 5,011,781 (37)

2004    Kerry 6,745,485 (54.3)                        Bush 5,509,826 (44.4)

Even internal evidence showed Trump was the problem. 

In Orange County, the richest in the United States, a Republican bastion in every election from 1936 to 2012, Trump lost. Trump lost, but all four GOP representatives to Congress were returned to Washington by the same voting blocks.

Similar patterns were clear in New Hampshire, where Trump said he was screwed. The polls, he said before the election, were rigged. In New Hampshire there was no evidence to support even that claim. 

The actual vote perfectly mirrored what polls had predicted: Clinton 348,521 (47.6); Trump 345,789 (47.2).

Again, there was no evidence to indicate waves of Guatemalans appeared at Granite State polls. Clinton fared best in Grafton County, winning 28,500 votes to 19,000 for Trump. Still, she did worse than Obama in 2012, under-performing by 400 votes. Trump did better by 800 than Romney. Obama received 44,800 votes in Merrimack County in 2012. Clinton scored only 40,200. 

Romney had 34,500 votes in the same county. Trump piled up 37,700.  

In Cheshire County the same trend appeared: Obama 25,400; Clinton 22,100; Romney 15,200; Trump 16,900.

Strafford County was more of the same: Obama 36,000; Clinton 34,900; Romney 26,700; Trump 29,100.

So, where had Trump turned to for evidence to support his claims? Was he math-challenged? 

Or was he loaded with drugs?

A White House official cited a widely-debunked study done in 2008, which purportedly showed that 6.4% of non-citizens might have voted. But this study, which questioned tens of thousands of participants, included only 21 “yes” responses from individuals who said they were non-citizens but cast ballots, a total so minuscule, one researcher said it fell within the normal margin for error when people are filling out any survey, even one asking them if they like Rice Krispies or Captain Crunch.

Had he not been so busy tweeting, Mr. Trump could have pulled out a calculator and done the math. If there were 11.1 million illegals—and even if the 2008 survey was correct—then the total illegal vote would be:

11,100,000

           x .64

      719,400

But math didn’t matter. Trump believed Bigfoot was real. So did his poor fans. One right-wing website ran a story with the scary title: Here’s What Voter Fraud Looks Like in 23 States. If you actually read the story, however, the example offered for Colorado was one person, Sara Sosa, who died in 2009, but voted in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. In other words, someone was stuffing the ballot box, with one entire ballot! 

In California primaries, in just three counties, there were reportedly 194 people who voted twice. 

In Florida, Deisy Penton de Cabrera was convicted in 2013 after she was found with twelve absentee ballots belonging to others and shown to have “a list of elderly Hispanic voters, many [of] whom were deaf, blind, or had Alzheimer’s.” 

In early 2015, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele announced, “there’s potential voter fraud in Pennsylvania.” 

She went on to say that 731 people may have double-voted in her state.

In this way, right-wing nuts built a case: 194 in California, 731 in Pennsylvania, Bigfoot, Sosa, maybe returning again from the dead. 

My god, we were talking bazillions of illegals voting!

Eventually, Snopes, a non-partisan fact-checking site, traced the three-to-five-million claim back to one source, a gentleman named Greg Phillips, who said he was founder of VoteStand, and who reported he had “verified” three million illegal votes within five days of the November 8 election.

Sadly, he refused to release sources or data or explain methodology until such time as it felt right.

(Probably: never.)

In fact, the absence of evidence for concern was crystal clear. Consider the case of Florida, for a moment. With an estimated 850,000 illegal immigrants residing in the state, Governor Rick Scott set out before the 2012 election to purge voting rolls and protect democracy at its roots. First, the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 men and women who might be voting illegally. 

Scary! 

A second careful check of records, duplicate names, wrong addresses, and more, quickly cut that figure to 2,700. 

Less scary! 

Then more checking reduced the total to 200 possible illegals, one of whom turned out to be an 85-year-old World War II veteran. 

Eventually, after many tax dollars wasted, the state did manage to purge 85 names from the rolls.

Not scary at all!

Nevertheless, in similar fashion, President Trump now pledges a massive effort to catch millions of illegal voters, promises to spend millions and millions in taxpayer monies on his hallucinatory quest.

Bigfoot must be stopped.

For the good of the country.

Bigfoot, a Canadian beast by birth, heads (illegally) for the polls.