Santa Barbara Voters Say No to Trumpian Politics

Santa Barbara Voters Say No to Trumpian Politics

Huge Turnout Thanks to All Mail-in Ballots, Drop-off Centers, Polling Places Opened for Three Days

By Nick Welsh | November 4, 2020

While the outcome  of this year’s presidential showdown has the nation biting its collective cuticles for days — perhaps weeks — to come, Santa Barbara County voters could not have been any clearer in their repudiation of President Donald Trump this week. Even in the face of a COVID pandemic, the existence of which the president has all but denied, Santa Barbara voters took to their mail boxes, ballot drop boxes, and yes, even to their polling places in record numbers to cast ballots in this year’s election. And most decisively, they returned their ballots early enough to be safely counted just in case there were any mail delivery delays, election night glitches, or last-minute legal challenges.

None of those problems came to pass in Santa Barbara. 

By contrast, President Trump — defying precedent yet again — announced at 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday that he had won the election even as millions of ballots still remained uncounted and a handful of key battleground states remained very much up for grabs. The election was being stolen, Trump declared, by “a very sad group of people.” He would take legal action with the Supreme Court, he vowed, to stop any further counting of election ballots. “This is a fraud on the American public,” he fumed.