The shadow of Trump and the proliferation of hoaxes about electoral fraud hovers over the legislative ones that renew Congress
In the country that presumes to be a beacon of democracy, tomorrow people vote with fear. And it’s not just fear of losing her, it’s physical, imminent fear. Even before the day of the mid-term elections arrived, a Harlem polling station had to be closed on Sunday due to a bomb threat, according to the Board of Elections. Imagine what it will be like to vote in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada or Georgia, the four most decisive states, in which the difference may be a handful of votes.
“Here we go again! Rigged Elections!” Donald Trump wrote on social media on Sunday. The only proof he offered that “the fraud” can take away victory from his own, as he claims happened to him in 2020, was an article on a far-right website that protested the accumulation of false votes in Pennsylvania without providing any evidence.
With the final onslaught of the Democrats, who in recent days have put all the heavyweights to campaign, party sources believe that it may not go as badly as everyone expects. And if so, there is no doubt that Trump will shout “fraud!” This time he will not be alone. During the two years since his defeat in November 2020, the former president has exercised tight control in the Reagan and Bush party, where he has purged in primaries those who were not willing to follow him in false denunciations of him. The test of baptism in Trump’s world is to proclaim loud and clear that he was robbed, no matter how much evidence is presented to prove otherwise.
Among his loyalists is the Pennsylvania legislator. “Honorable Francis X. Ryan”, heads the letter addressed to him by the local State Department in response to his false accusations that there are already 240,000 “unverified” ballots. The complaint “is not only incorrect and reflects a lack of understanding of the system,” Acting Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman replied, copying more than a dozen lawmakers, but also misrepresents the testimony he gave before the Assembly Governance Committee with Secretary of State Jonathan Marks.
According to Reuters’ hoax checking process, there are fewer than 7,600 mail-in ballots marked ‘unverified’, which just means they need extra checking. According to the law, voters have up to six days after the elections to provide the information requested. The electoral authorities of the United States do not certify the results when the polls close. On the contrary, victory often depends on vote projections made by the media when they believe that the result is very clear. That’s unlikely to happen tonight, short of a Democratic Party debacle.
Trump deniers don’t care about facts, they play with the world of perceptions, ready to stir emotions. His Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano, publicly wondered why “it’s always the cities where the Democrats win that fail to count the votes on election night.” The statement, of course, is false. There are numerous counties in Texas and other states in the country that also fail to do so in a single day, although it is true that the party of Obama and Biden usually wins in large cities, where there are more votes to count than in a small town.
Unidentified
And even if everything is in place, the Senate candidate Trump supports in Arizona, Blake Masters, has twice said that if he wins by 30,000 votes against his rival, former astronaut Mark Kelly, “he cannot guarantee” that 40,000 will not appear. votes “by unidentified persons” in favor of Kelly. It is clear that it cannot be guaranteed that what has never happened and may never happen will not happen, but it is enough to shake the ghost to plant the seed of anger in the paranoid minds that have already been cultivated for rebellion by Trump in the last six years.
As a result, armed vigilantes have been stationed outside the polls for weeks, pointing their automatic rifles at voters and taking photos of their license plates. The authorities have had to choose reinforcement barriers to protect the buildings in which the counting of the votes will take place. There are officials who have installed plexiglass screens to protect themselves from violence and ‘panic’ buttons to call for help. Some organizations have prepared to respond quickly via social media when false claims of voter fraud begin to emerge.
NGOs that routinely travel to monitor elections in fragile democracies are asking candidates to commit to respecting the results. And counties especially vulnerable to hysteria, such as Maricopa, Arizona, have installed cameras to monitor every phase of the tabulation process.
In theory, a third of the Senate is elected and the renewal of the entire House of Representatives, in addition to 36 governors and more than 10,000 minor positions that will be very important when organizing the electoral process for the White House in two years. But in practice, what “is at stake is democracy,” Obama and Biden have said in their campaign closures until they become hoarse. Judging by fear and security measures, American democracy does not have to wait until tomorrow, it is already in trouble.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse
The fan is colorful. Four men who pay homage to Donald Trump could become senators tomorrow. They hold the key to the future of the US and much of the world: In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a TV star surgeon who rose to fame thanks to Oprah Winfrey; in Arizona, Master Blake, right-hand man of billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, who intends to battle against “the nefarious alliance between Big Government, Big Technology and Big Business.” In Georgia, Hershel Walker, a former football player converted to evangelicalism, has proposed to ban abortion without exception, although several women have accused him of paying him for one. And in Nevada, Adam Laxalt, president of Trump’s re-election campaign in the state, and grandson of the beloved governor of Basque origin Paul Laxalt, whom 14 members of his family have accused in a letter of exploiting his grandfather’s last name to make a name.
It will be enough for two of them to win tonight for the Democrats to lose the meager control they have in the Senate. The confirmation of the members of the Government, of the federal judges and even those of the Supreme Court will depend on that. The items that are destined to pay for the war in Ukraine and anything that the president, Joe Biden, proposes. With them will come the scandal. Without them, the paralysis of the Executive, with a Solomonically divided Congress.
#polls #fear