By OBA CANTINE WILLIAMS
Rep. Gregory Meeks held a “don’t stop vote” rally on the steps of Queens Borough Hall on Thursday, following cries from President Trump and his administration urging states to prematurely stop counting votes as it appeared that former vice-president Joe Biden was clinching the election.
“This came about organically”, the Democratic congressman’s aide, Andrei Vasilescu told Brooklyn News service, “with Trump’s attemptto stop the count and commit voter fraud.”
Earlier this week Trump wrongfully accused democrats of trying to steal the election pointing to the late ballots for his rival as a fraudulent ploy to “steal” votes.
Meeks, chairman of the Queens Democratic organization was reelected on Tuesday in the 5th congressional district in southwestern Queens.
On Wednesday he thanked his supporters in a tweet saying, “Thank you to the people of the 5th Congressional district of New York for giving me the
honor of representing you once more in Congress. It is a privilege and duty I never take lightly. Let’s keep working together.”
Trump’s call out for states to cease the counting of ballots from many legally registered voters, and many of his followers and sympathizers labeling many of the uncounted votes as fraudulent, showed the president’s disregard for the democratic process, his detractors said. On election night as many states continued to count votes, president Trump falsely announced his victory in states that have not officially announced a result. His lawyers also filed several lawsuits against states that continued to count ballots.
“We’ve known well in advance that the results of this election will take time as we count every ballot, including the ones that have been mailed in,” Meeks said. “If we look at states like Pennsylvania, it was the Republican controlled state legislature that prohibited mail-in ballots from being counted early, back-loading predominantly Democratic votes. Now they’re trying to say the results of the system and rules they created are suspicious.”
As of Thursday, the States that have been named in Trump’s lawsuits were Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Each state at one point during the week looked as though it was poised to go to Trump; but with more than half of the votes counted and Biden approaching 270 electoral votes, many voters eagerly awaited the announcement of a winner.
“Americans cast their ballots according to the rules that were presented to them and their votes must be counted, regardless of how often president Trump baselessly tweets ‘fraud’ ,” Meeks added.”In a democracy, you don’t cherry pick which votes to count; you don’t choose your voters, your voters choose you.”
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