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Forget about polls! The duel between Donald Trump and Joe Biden depends on an issue that touches the core of American democracy, and about which a dispute is being carried out by all means.
If you believe the polls, things look pretty clear in America. Joe Biden stands in front of Donald Trump fairly clear nationwide and stricter in most disputed states. The institutes claim that the surveys are much more reliable than in 2016.
There are a few outliers that make headlines quickly. But what really happens in the polls: little or nothing. The big problem: they only tell us about the stable state of mind, not about the votes that were included in the result on election day.
But the question that will determine the outcome of this election is precisely this: who does the vote count and who does not?
He sounds adventurous in the most powerful, proud, and longest-lived democracy in the world. And yet that is the vanishing point towards which everything is headed in my eyes.
In any case, votes only count indirectly: the election is made in the Electoral College. Furthermore, elections in the US have always been characterized by preventing certain citizens from voting. In the past, black people had to undergo absurd knowledge and writing tests, but today it is more subtle: a missing middle initial from the voter register can mean that a citizen cannot vote.
But this year there are completely new opportunities. There is the subject of vote by mail, much debated. In the year of the pandemic, many more Americans will vote by mail than usual. No one is really ready for it.
In the primary elections of the first half of the year, no more than half a million votes were counted by mail: sometimes the ballot was in the wrong envelope, sometimes the postmark and often the rules could not be read what counts and what doesn’t have yet to be clarified on Election Day. . A failed dress rehearsal for November.
Let’s take a look at beleaguered Pennsylvania. There, Democrats and Republicans argue about all kinds of questions: Should the so-called naked ballots that were placed directly in the envelope instead of a second voting envelope also count? There may be 100,000 of those votes, electoral management was calculated based on the experience of the area code. Wrong-stamped letters or fuzzy postmarks? Can there be containers where postal voting papers can be dumped directly to relieve United States mail?
Democrats want more, Republicans want fewer mail-in votes. They argue about this not only in parliament and in the media, but also in dozens of court cases. The basic rules are not clear even a month before the elections. The argument is off the headlines, but I think it’s more important than the last Pennsylvania poll. 100,000 empty ballots that could be invalid. In a state that Donald Trump won in 2016 by just 44,000 votes. The question of what matters and what cannot determine the winner.
If a lot of mail-in votes are counted, Biden’s leadership in the polls can translate into a majority. Otherwise, Trump’s chances are improving.
More Democrats than Republicans vote by letter, the effect could be huge this year. That is why Trump has been campaigning against this type of voting for months. His claims that he threatens massive fraud are false. Closer to the truth, if exaggerated, comes his observation that a universal postal vote, as the Democrats wanted, “would never again elect a Republican in this country.”
In many of the contested states, it will take a long time to count the votes by mail, especially in metropolitan areas where many vote democratically. That can produce an interesting effect. While it looks like a Trump victory on election night in states like Wisconsin, the subsequent counting of mail-in votes could boost Biden.
“Red mirage” and “blue shift” are the latest buzzwords for the phenomenon. That means: on election night, after the votes cast have been counted, especially at the polling station, the card dips deep into Republican red and then becomes more and more Democratic-blue the more mail-in votes are count. What looked like a Trump win turns out to be a Biden win.
It’s no wonder that Trump recently insisted that a result must be available on election night. Would he look like an honest Democrat as his leadership melts here and there during the count past Election Night until the last vote is counted? Or will he try to quickly announce his victory via tweet and judge that running counts as a scam against his opponents?
An army of lawyers, who have carefully studied the primaries with their breakdowns, are already ready to influence the counts. Pandemic elections are very likely to offer points of attack.
Recall the 2000 election: the drama in Florida about the paper punched in the ballot papers, on which the brave poll workers bent for weeks. We are now replacing the scraps of paper with postal voting envelopes, postmarks and postage stamps. We are adding the disputed states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to Florida. This is the playing field in the 2020 election year.
The fight over which vote will count is being fought in the courts, in parliaments, on the streets and by Trump from the White House stage and via continuous tweet. If there are no clarifications in a state, the parliament or the governor himself could nominate the voters for the electoral college, regardless of the votes of the citizens. That’s how unclear the rules are in America.
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in a narrow 5: 4 decision that the counts in Florida should stop. Bush led with 538 votes. Some voices counted, others didn’t. Then Al Gore, who was right behind, took the decisive step: publicly admitted defeat.
A move that went out of style in the United States of 2020. In 2016, Hillary Clinton did not want to admit defeat. Biden, whose supporters also express serious doubts about a proper election result, should think twice before admitting defeat. With Trump it is not to be expected anyway.
He has already said that he must quickly fill the post on the Supreme Court, which has become vacant due to the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because the court will finally “decide on the elections.”
In Washington, alarmist forecasts are on the rise: from a losing Trump barricading himself in the White House to a civil war to the idea that the election outcome remains unclear and two limousines pull up in front of Congress on September 20. January for the inauguration, with two candidates, each of whom believes that they should now be presented for the office of president. You can read all this these days.
It doesn’t have to go that far. A result can also be available after days of counting, so clear, for whoever, that all subsequent games are superfluous. But in all other cases we have to expect a tough battle over which vote counts and which doesn’t. And that is a sad and dangerous matter for a democracy.
