The two leaders pour out state-to-state rallies as anticipation drives more than twenty-one million Americans to vote early
Joe Biden and Donald Trump have turned the final stretch of the US legislative election campaign into a kind of revalidation of the 2020 presidential elections, perhaps as a preview of what may happen in 2024 if both present themselves as candidates for the White House again . Neither of them has officially confirmed this aspiration, although they are expected to do so, and while they have applied to this intermediate round as if it were a personal matter, it is also a sign of the closeness of Tuesday’s elections and how much Democrats and Republicans play the rest of the legislature.
Thus, the president has deployed since Friday an intense agenda of events in support of the Democratic candidates for Congress, the Senate and state governments. He has visited New Mexico, California and Chicago – two strongholds of his party – as well as Pennsylvania, a pivotal territory where the vote is much closer. Trump, for his part, has toured four states in as many days: Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The interest in this appointment is perceived in the street. The high rate of participation registered in early voting – which is on the way to surpassing the historical records set in 2018 – underlines the anxiety that weighs on voters in the face of elections full of uncertainty and transcendence. Of the more than 21 million ballots already delivered in recent weeks by the most ‘early risers’ citizens, 45.2% correspond to Democrats, for only 33.3% of Republicans.
According to a recent study by the FiveThirtyEight electoral data analysis platform, 60% of Americans will find denier candidates on the ballot. That is to say, of candidates who would be willing to annul the valid electoral results in case of adversity, a phenomenon known as electoral subversion, especially pronounced in the swing states that were decisive in the election of Joe Biden.
The key public offices are in the House of Representatives and the Senate, where Democrats have slim majorities on which the viability of the president’s agenda depends. The governorships, the secretariats and the attorney general’s offices of each state are also very important, since they are positions of power with the ability to rule out, annul or decertify unfavorable results.
Increase in donors
Midterm elections do not usually attract much attention in the fifty states that make up the country, but this year an unprecedented avalanche of funding has entered, especially in support of extremist candidates. Just one fact: according to the Brennan Center for Justice, in six territories the candidates to get the secretary of state had raised $16.3 million at the beginning of August, more than double the amount entered at the same point in 2018. The increase in funds, provided in many cases by sources that are not even based in those states, is one of the reasons why denialist candidates have far outnumbered those who have not questioned the electoral results.
The prognosis is particularly alarming in the House of Representatives of Congress. There, 118 denialist Republican candidates and 7 who doubt electoral legitimacy have a 95% chance of winning. In the Senate, only three denialist candidates – that is, those who deny Biden’s presidential victory and support the idea of Trump’s electoral fraud – hold advantages that ensure their election within a few hours.
These elections are different not only because of the advance of extremist candidates, but also because of the existence of new parameters introduced in the last two years on the electoral board. The new voter restriction laws, the reconfiguration of certain electoral districts in favor of the Republicans, the infiltration of radical deniers in the electoral apparatus, the threats of armed violence and the intimidation of voters present unprecedented variables.
Biden has already warned this weekend that his effort in this campaign is not only aimed at the Democrats winning seats, but also at avoiding “chaos” for the United States in the event of a Republican victory. Meanwhile, the federal Administration finalizes the meetings with police chiefs, mayors and local electoral administrators to create response plans in the face of any situation of violence.
A special prosecutor to investigate the former president
The increasingly solid intention of Donald Trump to stand in the 2014 presidential elections has just been crossed by the US Department of Justice, which is considering the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor to study the investigations open to the tycoon. This expert must explore whether any of these files can clearly end with an imputation of the former president.
Because neither is trivial. The first investigation refers to Trump’s attempts to blow up the electoral results that two years ago gave Joe Biden the presidency of the country. The second aims to analyze the management of confidential documents during his time in the White House and why he took dozens of reports considered “top secret” to his Florida mansion after leaving office.
When tomorrow’s elections end, the investigators expect to multiply the summonses to Trump’s associates and former advisers and do not rule out accusations.
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