Should that happen, Vice President Pence may be put in a position where he needs to decide between standing with his boss or standing with the will of the country. Asked about such a scenario at the vice-presidential debate Wednesday, his response suggested that his loyalties would lie with the former.
“If Vice President Biden is declared the winner and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what would be your role and responsibility as vice president?” moderator Susan Page asked. “What would you personally do? You have two minutes.”
Pence’s response came in three parts. The first was to assert his confidence that Trump would win, rattling off the familiar litany of accomplishments that’s often peppered throughout the president’s speeches.
Then he pivoted to a line of attack familiar to regular consumers of conservative media….
“President Trump and I are fighting every day in courthouses to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating this universal mail-in voting that will create a massive opportunity for voter fraud,” Pence said. “If we have a free and fair election, we know we’re going to have confidence in it, and I believe in all my heart that President Donald Trump is going to be reelected for four more years.”
n other words, Pence holds to the party line, which is not reassuring.
Again, there is no “massive opportunity for fraud” that’s created, given the safeguards that are in place. The bigger risk is clearly that more mail ballots will be rejected on review in an effort to stamp out even attempted fraud. Biden and Harris aren’t pushing universal mail-in voting; that, instead, was driven by state leaders who wanted to offer an alternative form of voting, given the coronavirus pandemic. Only five states moved to mailing out ballots automatically, four of which Trump is not likely to win.