Sec of State Wyman: Dangerous to cast doubt on election without evidence

As we head to recounts and court battles in the presidential election, the president  is making numerous claims about the counting and fraud.

Secretary of State Kim Wyman joined the Gee and Ursula Show to discuss the escalating rhetoric and why it’s unhelpful.

“It’s significantly dangerous whenever you have anyone who casts doubt on an election without any kind of evidence and just makes wild claims that there is rampant fraud or, for that matter, to be bipartisan, rampant suppression without evidence. You’re risking people’s confidence in the election and the risk there is you’re undermining democracy,” Wyman said.

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“In this context of the bigger context of, you know, cybersecurity and misinformation, this is exactly what our foreign enemies want,” she added. “Russia wants people to not believe that the election was fair. Iran wants that, North Korea, China wants that. And so it’s a very dangerous game to be playing with the American public.”

Wyman believes it’s the close nature of modern American elections that leads to the kind of fears and vitriol we’re seeing now, especially worsened by social media.

“If you go back all the way to 1984, when Ronald Reagan really won in the last true presidential landslide, you know, we really have a divided country and it’s about half and half, and it goes either way. And I think that the vitriol that we see and probably experience on social media just further divides us,” she said. “We’re half red and half blue as a country, and so presidential elections put a fine point on it, and ultimately one side or the other wins.”

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“But look at the margin,” Wyman added. “We’re not talking about tens of millions or hundreds of millions of votes difference. We’re talking about seven to five million difference nationwide. We’re kind of divided. We need to figure out the common ground.”

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