Sen. Bernie Sanders quite accurately predicted how the 2020 election would quickly become poisoned by a deeply depressing false narrative built on continued attempts at disparaging wholly valid mail-in ballots.
During an interview with Jimmy Fallon in October, as many have since revisited amid the ongoing Trump-centered fuckery of the election, Sanders explained that the expected high volume of mail-in ballots in certain states had him and others worried about Trump using his base's general distrust of this method of voting—as well as the wait for final counts in certain regions—to push a lie alleging the office was being unfairly taken from him.
"Here is my worry," Sanders said during the Tonight Show interview last month. "What polls show and what studies have shown is that—for whatever reason—Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots. Republicans are more likely to walk into polling booths on Election Day. It is likely that the first votes that will be counted will be those people who came in on Election Day, which will be Republican."
The fear at the time, as Sanders explained, was that Trump would prematurely (and inaccurately) self-declare his victory before crucial votes had been counted. As we've seen since, that is exactly what happened.
"It could well be that at 10 o'clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan. He's winning in Pennsylvania. He's winning in Wisconsin," Sanders said last month. "And he gets on the television and he says 'Thank you, Americans, for re-electing me! It's all over! Have a good day!' But then the next day and the day following, all of those mail-in ballots start getting counted and it turns out that Biden has won those states, at which point Trump says 'See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent! I told you those mail-in ballots were crooked! And, you know, we're not gonna leave office!' That is a worry that I and a lot of people have."
In recent hours, Trump has shared a number of bullshit-laden tweets attempting to undermine the election, several of which have been flagged by Twitter and slapped with warning messages for including "misleading" information on "an election or other civic process."
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, said early Wednesday they have legal teams "ready to deploy" should Trump follow through on his threat to attempt a court-centered approach on stifling the count.
