Tallahassee Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum withdrew his concession on Sunday as the mandatory machine recount began in Florida. According to current data from Real Clear Politics, Republican Ron DeSantis has won 4,075,879 votes (49.6%), Gillum has received 4,042,195 (49.2%) and other candidates combined, a total of 100,542 (1.3%). This puts DeSantis and Gillum apart by 33,684 votes, a margin of 0.4%.

Due to the downward adjustments in vote totals from Broward and Palm Beach counties, Gillum’s retraction appears reasonable as his margin of loss is now less than 0.5% of the vote.

What makes this suspect is the fact that, on election night, the two candidates were 1% apart. On Thursday and Friday, “as new vote totals came in from Broward and Palm Beach counties,” that margin had been cut by 60%.

Gillum said “I am replacing my words of concession with an uncompromised and unapologetic call that we count every single vote. And I say this recognizing that my fate in this may or may not change.”

Florida’s senate race is even closer. Governor Rick Scott’s lead over Sen. Bill Nelson was 38,717 votes (0.5%) on election night. Due to the new vote totals from Broward and Palm Beach counties, the candidates are now apart by only 12,562 votes (0.2%). (I covered this in two previous posts here and here.)

At the center of the storm is Broward County election official Brenda Snipes, whose past history of election improprieties is well known. She should have been removed from office two years ago for destroying ballots that had been under subpoena. It is difficult, but not impossible, to fire election officials because they themselves have been elected. Snipes was elected in 2016.

So what are we dealing with here? Were the changes in vote totals caused by election official error (incompetence) or are they evidence of a larger, far more serious issue that all Americans should be concerned about – voter fraud? Sure looks like the latter to me.

Obviously, we have no way of knowing, but I would bet that voter fraud has played a role in past Democratic victories, especially those that have been close. And I wonder how Republicans could have been blindsided by the current situation in Florida.

Although Democrats have always played it fast and lose with the law, Republicans have never held them accountable. If they had, Hillary Clinton and half of Obama’s cabinet officials would be in jail. As any teenager will tell you, if they keep getting away with bad behavior, their acts will become more and more outrageous over time. This lesson has not been lost on Democrats. First, they dabbled in it. When they found they could get away with minor improprieties, they were emboldened. When they are called out for something, they become indignant and Republicans become the bad guys. And they’re doing it now. “Republicans don’t like the direction of the vote total changes, so they are accusing us of theft.”

When Democrats see an obstacle in their path, they will remove it by any means necessary. Look at how Hillary Clinton dealt with Bernie Sanders in the fight for the 2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination. She had bailed out the DNC financially and essentially controlled them. She then used her leverage to ensure her coronation as the nominee. When the Sanders campaign made accusations against Clinton, her campaign went on the offense.

The Clinton camp forcefully dismissed Sanders’s accusations and argued that his attacks had “gotten out of hand.” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager said “as Senator Sanders faces nearly insurmountable odds, he is resorting to baseless accusations of illegal actions and poisoning the well for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.”

We discovered that Sanders’ accusations against Clinton had been justified when former interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile wrote a book in late 2017 which provided proof that Clinton controlled the DNC. Brazile wrote:

The aforementioned Marc Elias, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, is currently down in Florida helping to rig sort out the state’s senate and governor races. I mentioned in a previous post that Elias, in his capacity as the campaign’s legal counsel, had funneled money from the DNC and the Clinton campaign to finance the Trump Dossier.

Think about the hutzpah it took for Democrats to frame President Trump for colluding with the Russians to steal the presidency and the far reaching consequences of that. They have proven that there’s almost no line they won’t cross to gain power.

The point of all of this is that Republicans have two years to prepare for the 2020 presidential election and we have to expect that Democrats will lie, cheat and steal to win it. We need to forget about being ladies and gentlemen and take measures that will prevent them from stealing the presidency, or even one senate seat, house seat or governorship. We can’t be caught off guard again. If we do, we’ll have only ourselves to blame.