With the arrival of voting day in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, one thing is clear: the final results are not going to be known any time soon. On the one hand, mail-in voting, absentee voting, and other forms of early voting have attracted voters in numbers that are unparalleled in recent times, and analysts predict that close to 100 million votes would have already been cast by November 3. Simultaneously, incumbent President Donald Trump has, through the blistering heat of the election campaign since the summer, been pouring vitriol on mail-in voting as a fraud-plagued practice that will lead to a rigged outcome, favouring Democrats.
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The reality is that the rate of voting fraud in the U.S. is between 0.00004% and 0.0009%, according to a 2007 study by the Brennan Center for Justice, among others. In light of the controversy whipped up by Mr. Trump, which has seen social media tech platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, slap ‘Fact Check’ labels on some of his incendiary posts on this subject, the head of the non-partisan Federal Election Commission (FEC), Ellen Weintraub, said, “There is simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud.”
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The fear in this case is not so much the ignorance about mail-in voting, but rather, in the eventuality that if Mr. Trump loses by a narrow margin, he and his followers may seize upon the rare instance when mail-in voting has led to calls for a vote recount — as it happened in a 2018 North Carolina primary, when a consultant for Republican candidate Mark Harris tampered with voting papers — and escalate to the courts allegations of outright election rigging.
Mr. Trump has already suggested that the only victory that his Democratic rival and former Vice-President Joe Biden could enjoy would be a rigged one. Speaking to media in the final hours of campaigning in North Carolina, he said, “As soon as the election is over, we are going in with our lawyers.”
In such a situation, it is not inconceivable that the closed-door dispute resolution mechanism including the Congress, the Electoral College and the FEC would sanction the House of Representatives deciding the outcome as a “contingent election”, based on one-State-one-vote, which is likely to improve the odds of the Republican Party.
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Limited solutions
For those concerned about a peaceful transition of power — something Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to commit to, should he lose — it is worrying that there is considerable room for legal manoeuvres afforded to a disgruntled candidate in a U.S. presidential election. There is a real prospect of civil unrest in these circumstances, given the rise of urban militias, many waving slogans in support of Mr. Trump, but also a few led by African American outfits — all of them potentially clashing violently on the streets in the event of a disputed election. No more proof need be offered that this is not an alarmist concern, than the case of thirteen militia men arrested by the FBI recently for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and violently overthrow the State government.
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Only one act by the outgoing Commander in Chief — if indeed he loses the election — could quell what will otherwise become a season of discontent for American democracy: a concession speech. Yet, there is no constitutional provision as such for a public concession, which, in an ideal world, would include a statement of defeat, a call to unite, a celebration of democracy and a vow to fight on.
Given this glaring omission in the constitutional guarantees of the U.S., there is only one route to overcoming the risk of chaos in the days ahead, and that is for those on either side of the partisan divide seeking a peaceful transition, to march peaceably in massive numbers for their cause, to eschew violence, but instead take up constitutional due process to express their voice, by also reaching out to their elected representatives.
narayan@thehindu.co.in
