With inauguration day nearing, the fight over the 2020 presidential election remains a key focus of both political parties.
While president-elect Joe Biden prepares to enter the White House on Jan. 20, the Trump administration continues its battle to prove voter fraud.
Trump’s team has enacted nearly 50 lawsuits concerning issues with mail-in ballots and widespread voter fraud. One by one, courts throughout the country continue to delegitimize these claims.
Pennsylvania remains a high stakes state. Though its 20 electoral votes remain poised for Biden, a recent petition to the Supreme Court has threatened to overturn the election results.
As of Dec. 21, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani heads this challenge, asking the court to reverse three Pennsylvania Supreme Court rulings over issues with mail-in votes and re-choosing the state’s electors.
According to The Morning Call, the Republican Party needs to move fast to determine this case before Jan. 6, when Congress will officially tally the Electoral College’s votes. As of now, the justices are not scheduled to meet until two days after this count.
Even as Messiah’s student body rests from a packed semester, many students may still feel apprehensive about the election and its effects.
“College-age people tend to be more idealistic in their beliefs and expectations of government,” President of the Conservatives of Messiah University (CMU) Club Jacob Cornwell said. “Politicians have been taking advantage of this fact for decades by claiming they are the solution to all the ills of American society and the world. In this election, it was very hard to put faith in either candidate, so they mainly focused on defaming each other.”
Moving towards the future, Cornwell sees the political division throughout the country as a problem that we can fix, though it will take time and an open mind.
“We must realize that a difference in opinion on political issues does not make it impossible to have fellowship,” he said. “Anti-racism is the greatest example of this that I have seen. To disagree on how to fix issues of race in America does not make someone a hateful racist monster and neither does voting Republican in a presidential election. Typically our end goal is the same, we just approach it in very different ways.”
As a Christian community at Messiah, we have a further responsibility to heal the brokenness that exists in the world.
“I hope that we as Christians realize that there is always reason to hope because heaven, not this world, is our goal,” Cornwell said. “I pray that America, even with the upcoming president, will protect the lives of the unborn, protect religious freedom and the sanctity of the family. The current policies of the incoming administration seems to strive for the opposite unfortunately.”
Trump campaign will again ask U.S. high court to upend election results | Reuters