LEXINGTON, Ky. – It likely surprises very few people that responses to the announcement of President-elect Joe Biden have been plentiful after defeating President Donald Trump. Supporters of Biden and Trump have not been quiet throughout the candidates’ campaigns and, in some ways, voices on both sides have been amplified since Biden received the more than 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency.

Todd Curtis, of Richmond, said he supported the Biden-Harris ticket and is ready to give the former vice president his chance in the White House.

“I think it’s a great day for America,” Curtis said. “Trump supporters claim that Biden accomplished nothing in his previous 47 years in politics. That is debatable. What he did in 47 years is build relationships – he is friends with Mitch McConnell as well as Lindsey Graham. Those relationships are only going to benefit the American people, both Democrat and Republican. Biden will be able to reach across the aisle and work for the betterment of this great country. Most of the time, Trump struggled to even work within his own aisle. If Biden doesn’t meet expectations, we have another election in four years.”

Sandy Spicer is a Trump supporter. She lives just outside Beattyville in Lee County where Trump won with 82% of the vote. She is not satisfied with the outcome of the election and is even more dissatisfied with the changes made to Kentucky’s election process even in the face of a COVID-19 pandemic that is reaching its highest levels to date, especially in the Commonwealth’s rural counties. 

“I don’t believe in changing our Constitution,” Spicer said. “Not for a pandemic, not for anything. I thought states changing voting is unspeakable and unthinkable. There is a vast difference in mail-in voting by requesting a ballot and states perhaps mailing out ballots to everyone without requests. What if that a person has died or has moved? Don’t ever count votes after the polls close that aren’t already in the ‘waiting-to-be-counted’ stack. Don’t allow people to correct ballots they forgot to sign. I believe every ballot should have a signature, the last four digits of one’s Social Security number, and the date and time it was received.”

Lexington-based GOP political consultant T.J. Litafik said President Trump losing the White House does not reflect poorly on the Republican Party in Kentucky or across the country.

“The Republican Party is not just alive but thriving in Kentucky and America,” Litafik said. “The GOP was always going to have to confront a post-Trump future, and this is just a four-year head start. With everything Trump had going against him, the fact that it, in the end, came down to a small number of votes in four states is pretty amazing. Conservative values and Republican majorities aren’t going anywhere regardless of the presidential outcome.”

Darrel Wilhite, of Belfry, in deep-red Pike County, said regardless of which candidate one supports, the United States should consider revamping the way it elects its leaders.

“It doesn’t matter who you supported, this election has made a joke out of the electoral process,” he said. “Not picking sides, but mail-in ballots and vote harvesting can cause cheating on either side. Why not require an in-person re-vote in the states that are still in question?”

Heather Potter-Rickman lives in Mitchell County, North Carolina, a rural GOP stronghold along the Tennessee border. She said she is concerned about the potential for hypocritical behavior as a result of the election.

“As a conservative who was frustrated and embarrassed by the way many on the left behaved when Hillary Clinton lost the election, I pray that my fellow conservatives who felt the same, and especially those who were highly and openly critical of those people, do not behave the same way now,” she said. 

Tamara Rousseau, also of Mitchell County, North Carolina, said she is hopeful this election helps create more bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans.

“This election did not have a landslide result,” she said. “The American people voted. Come together and work for the people of the United States of America, nor a political party.”

A group of six men from different parts of Kentucky traveled to Frankfort Saturday, Nov. 7, to not only show their support for President Trump but to also express their beliefs that the results of the election are not legitimate. 

No one in the group of six men reacted when a car flying a Biden-Harris flag drove by honking its horn in response to their presence, or when a man walked within ear-shot and yelled “bye-bye” and told them they would “get over it eventually.” Instead, they stayed on message, saying poll numbers were meant to suppress Republican voters and referred to a video that shows Biden allegedly announcing a plan to commit voter fraud. It was determined the video is fake and it has since been removed from most websites.

“People say, well, they got the polls wrong,” said Trump supporter Gary Thomas said. “It's meant to suppress – they know that they're skewing the votes tremendously to suppress conservative votes. If Trump would have been up by 10 points instead of Biden, we got a lot more passion and power out of the country’s conservative force, I'm just telling you. It is voter suppression. They know what they're doing.”

A group of Trump supporters spent several hours outside the capitol in Frankfort Saturday to show support for President Donald Trump. (Brandon Roberts/Spectrum News 1 KY)

Trump supporter Thomas Murray said from what he has observed, the numbers just do not make sense.

“How do the presidential candidates get 100,000 more votes than any other person on the ticket,” Murray asked. “The votes were so much that I questioned it. Anyone who votes in person is not just going to vote for the president and none of the rest.”