A security fence has been erected around the White House. Another protects Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence in Washington. Many businesses in the center of the capital have boarded up their windows with wooden planks, anticipating possible riots after the presidential elections being held this Tuesday in the United States. The risk of political violence is higher than ever, following the 2021 looting of the Capitol, the protests against the two candidates due to the high death toll in Gaza, and the two assassination attempts on Donald Trump in this campaign. Related News standard No Podcast Countdown to Change: Trump vs. Harris Andrea MoránAnd that is only in the capital, the usual center of protests. In several states, especially in the most disputed ones, such as Arizona or Georgia, workers and volunteers at polling stations have received training on how to act in the event of an attack, with firearms or not. Many schools, gyms and other voting centers have been reinforced with bulletproof glass. The police in hundreds of counties are going to observe the voting points with drones and reinforcement of agents. These security measures for an election would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but Trump’s allegations of fraud and the mobilization of his followers on the 6th January 2021, during a failed insurrection, have led police and prosecutors in all 50 states to preventively increase security measures. The Republican candidate has already advanced in several rallies, especially in Pennsylvania, which believes that there is fraud to steal the elections. “They are fighting very hard to steal this damn election,” said Trump, visibly frustrated, in the town of Lititz, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. “It’s a damn shame, and I’m the only one who talks about it because everyone is afraid to talk about it, and then they accuse you of being a conspiracy theorist… The ones who should be locked up are the ones who cheat in these horrible elections because what we went through in our country,” added the former president. Related News standard Yes An abyss separates the two Americas that vote David Alandete | Washington correspondent Since the Obama years, the Democratic Party has become one of the elites most concerned with identity politics, while Trump has reinvented himself as the last hope of a forgotten generation. The unusual risk that supporters of the former president descend on Washington again as happened in 2021 when they tried to prevent the certification of the results in the Capitol has led the local government to extreme security measures, especially because Kamala Harris will be in the capital on the night of the vote, following the results from the university where he studied, Howard, about three kilometers from the White House. That January 6, 2021, a mob, some with weapons, surrounded and ransacked the Capitol. Trump had gathered them before the White House for a demonstration, and he invited them to march “peacefully,” a request they ignored. There were five deaths, one protester from a firearm and several police officers later from suicide. Trump, for his part, has been the target of at least two assassination attempts this campaign. The first time, in July, when a young man went to a rally of his in Pennsylvania and after a series of catastrophic errors by the Secret Service he was able to shoot him in the head. Due to a movement by the candidate, he was only grazed on one ear. Later, while he was playing golf in Florida, another guy approached where he was with a rifle, which he left abandoned before escaping and being arrested. Even a plan from Iran The Secret Service has reinforced the security of all the candidates after these attacks . There is also, according to US intelligence, a plan by Iran to kill Trump, although no action related to it has been detected at the moment. In a completely extraordinary way, the attorneys general of all the states, all 50, Democrats and Republicans have agreed on a call for a peaceful transfer of power as an essential element for the stability of the country. «Violence has no place in the democratic process; “We will exercise our authority to enforce the law against any illegal act that threatens it,” the attorneys general assure. The risks are not just rhetorical. Already in 2020, in the days of vote counting, groups of supporters of the former president surrounded voting centers in several counties in decisive states that Biden won, such as Georgia or Arizona, and threatened workers who were participating in the count. Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Secretary of State, who is a Democrat, recently revealed that he wears a bulletproof vest because of threats he has received. Washington State Governor Jay Inslee said criminals set fire to a ballot box. The same thing happened in Oregon. Several governors have put the National Guard on alert, in anticipation of having to mobilize it if there are widespread protests and riots. In Washington, the capital, Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said at a news conference that more than 3,000 police officers will work 12-hour shifts all this week. This campaign has also been marked by the boycott of defense groups of the victims of the conflict in Gaza, critical of both Israel and the support that the White House has given it. At a rally for the Democratic candidate last Tuesday in Washington, hundreds of protesters surrounded the place with megaphones, shouting at those trying to enter. Public appearances by Biden and Harris have been interrupted by young people outraged by the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza , who have also occupied spaces in universities and the Capitol, sometimes confronting the police. These protesters, however, have not directed their criticism and protests with the same frequency towards Trump. Since the assault on the Capitol in 2021, at least 300 cases of political violence have been recorded in the United States, including 51 incidents so far alone this year, according to a detailed count by the Reuters agency. This increase represents the most important and sustained rise in political violence in the country since the 1970s. The turning point was 2016, the year of Trump’s first campaign, who imbued his message with combative metaphors, going so far as to claim that his followers They would be so loyal to him that he could “shoot from Fifth Avenue” without losing their support. For now, Trump is the only one who has resisted saying that he will respect the results of the elections whoever wins. At a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, he also said that he should not have left the White House in 2020, after the Capitol certified Biden’s victory. “I should have stayed, it was a fraud,” he said, against all evidence.
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