These brave state and local Republicans stood for truth over Trump’s election fiction

President Donald Trump has filed and lost more than 30 lawsuits challenging the outcome of the presidential election that occurred one month ago. His Attorney General William Barr announced that the Department of Justice has found no evidence of fraud that would affect the outcome of the election. Furthermore, Barr also concluded there was no evidence to support outlandish claims that computers were manipulated to deliver a large number of votes to President-elect Joe Biden.

Trump spent $3 million raised from his faithful followers to recount the ballots in Wisconsin — and found 87 more votes for Biden. A federal judge in Pennsylvania appointed by Trump dismissed his case with stern words about its evidence-free failure to prove his claim of fraud. Republican legislators in Michigan resisted Trump’s lobbying in the White House and confirmed the Biden victory in their state.

In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who says he voted for Trump, claims his fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots. Trump has attacked Raffensperger and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp for failing to do enough to help him overturn the election outcome in Georgia. Both these Republican elected officials have been profiles in courage as they defend the vote count and reject Trump’s allegations of fraud, while they and members of their families face abuse, including death threats.

The Republican governor in Arizona has certified that Biden won that state after all its 15 counties certified their election results.

Christopher Krebs, Trump’s hand-picked director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, whose job it was to monitor the election and ensure that there was no foreign interference, stated that the 2020 election was the most secure in our history. After he courageously rejected Trump’s claims of election interference and fraud, the president fired him.

Trump continues to assert the election was stolen from him while providing no credible evidence to support his outrageous claims. This is more than politics as usual. This is an intentional attack on our democracy, designed to challenge the legitimacy of the incoming president. This has never been done before.

Recall that Hillary Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election, when the vote count was much closer than it was this year. Al Gore graciously conceded the election in 2000, even though a politically divided U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision ordered the vote count in Florida to stop with 537 votes separating the candidates. Remember that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — George W. Bush’s brother — and Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris were supervising the election recount and ended up certifying the win in Florida that delivered the presidency to George W. Bush.

The appearances in Florida were not good in 2000, but to his credit, Gore put country above politics and did not attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the incoming president — even though Gore won 500,000 more popular votes than Bush and lost the Electoral College by just 271 to 266.

Trump’s refusal to accept the will of the American people, who fired him in a landslide, and concede to Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has led many of Trump’s loyal followers to believe that the election was fraudulent. Polls show that substantial majorities of Republicans believe that Trump was cheated out of reelection.

Unless Trump wants to be remembered in history as a whining sore loser who actively sought to undermine the legitimacy of his successor and our democracy, he must concede the election immediately. Losing an election is always painful, but politicians must accept the will of the people, and this includes Donald Trump.

It is also time for Republican leaders, especially in the U.S. Congress, to step up and lead or risk being labeled as cowards. This means they must tell their constituents the simple truth: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the presidential election fair and square.

Courageous state and local Republican officials in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona have certified this fact. Without these states, there is no way Trump can win reelection. The truth will set us all free.

Jim Slattery represented Kansas’ 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1995.