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Several public buildings, such as Congress, have been surrounded as a security measure.
The buildings in the center of the American capital woke up covered with wooden paneling on Tuesday, November 3. Some of the planks have already protected glass in the region since the Black Lives Matter movement occupied the streets of more than 100 cities across the country until June 2020. But most of the barricades have been recently installed and materially reflect the fear that the presidential elections scheduled for today will fall into acts of violence and looting, especially around the White House.
Covered so much, some of the commercial buildings seemed sealed: the “still working” signs were the password for customers to remove the wood and sneak through the door to buy a coffee or donut.
This is not how the American capital typically prepares for elections every four years. The sidings are a symbol that Americans are not facing a conventional choice. According to historian Bruce Schulman, director of the Institute for American Politics, attached to Boston University, this is possibly the most tense presidential race Americans have been in since 1864, when Abraham Lincoln’s re-election was confirmed amid the election. civil war. which resulted in the deaths of 620,000 Americans.
Another proof of this is the number of votes cast in advance in 2020: on Monday night (11/2), almost 100 million citizens had already expressed their choice between the Democratic candidate Joe Biden or the Republican Donald Trump, who was is running for reelection.
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Buildings in the US capital covered facades with sidings for fear of violence in the US elections
The number is a record and is equivalent to almost 75% of the total votes counted in 2016. In the US, going to the polls is not mandatory.
Contested Votes in Court
Almost 70% of the first votes were cast by mail. The covid-19 pandemic explains why so many voters chose this medium to make their choice. The United States is experiencing its third wave of infections, with nearly 500,000 new cases registered in the last week alone, and it leads the countries with the most deaths in absolute numbers, surpassing 230,000 deaths.
In recent months, the letter-based electoral system has come under severe criticism from President Donald Trump, who, down by around nine percentage points in national polls, has said voting by mail opens loopholes for the vote. fraud. Amid questions, Trump has shown signs that he would not be willing to quickly accept a possible defeat. “We want to make sure that the elections are clean, and I’m not sure that they are,” Trump told reporters in late September.
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Nearly 100 million voters have already voted early in the 2020 presidential election
The president also assured that he will go to the country’s Supreme Court to try to invalidate the votes by mail. Recently, Trump himself was responsible for a major change in the composition of the court. He indicated, and the United States Senate approved, the name of Conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett for a collegiate seat, thus forming a supermajority of 6 to 3 for Conservatives in the highest American court. Barrett may turn out the balance in an electoral trial in court.
But the lack of evidence that mail-order elections are particularly vulnerable to fraud and the fact that, according to information released by 20 US states, 45% of the first votes are for voters who declare themselves Democrats, against 30% for Republicans and 24% of independents have led political analysts to question the motivation of the president by casting doubt on the process. Clearly, canceling early and mail ballots would hurt his Democratic opponent the most and pave the way for the president to win another four years in the White House.
In fact, the Republican campaign has gone to court hundreds of times in recent days to try to rule out at least some of the early voting. In two successive decisions on the eve of Election Day, Justice denied the request of Trump’s lawyers, who wanted to set aside more than 127,000 votes cast in an area known for being Democrat in Houston, Texas, a traditionally Republican state. in which the dispute between the two parties became particularly close in 2020. The action drew criticism even from Trump supporters. Republican Joe Straus, former Speaker of the Texas Legislature, called the process “clearly flawed” and as evidence of the use of “desperate tactics.”
Credit, Images by AaronP / Bauer-Griffin / GC
On Rodeo Drive, the famous Beverly Hill Avenue in California, workers armored several luxury stores on the eve of the election.
Delayed results
Trump denies that this is the case and claims that his intention is for the Americans to obtain an electoral result as soon as possible. In the last four disputes, the definition of the new president came out until the morning of the day after the elections.
“We can wait weeks until we know what is happening. The whole world is waiting for this decision. The lawyers are going to go to court to fight,” the president said in one of his last demonstrations last night.
Counting ballots by mail takes more time than ballots filled out in person at polling stations. Additionally, some states, like Pennsylvania, allow votes to arrive by mail for a week after the polls close, a move the Republican finds unacceptable. “If people wanted their votes to be counted, they should have sent them much earlier,” says Trump.
Credit, EPA
The president’s advisers told Axios that Trump is considering winning before the consolidated result
The president’s advisers told the Axios news website, on condition of anonymity, that Trump would be considering winning if partial vote counting in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona and Georgia gave him an advantage. still on the night of the 3rd. But, due to the dynamics of the vote count, an initial result favorable to Trump is no guarantee that he was the winner of the election.
For experts, such an attitude would plunge American democracy into discredit and have potentially dangerous results. “I think if we don’t meet the winner on election night, or at least the next morning, we are going into dangerous territory,” says Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University. “Because even if the electoral authorities are doing everything correctly, the political climate in the United States today is so explosive that, if there is uncertainty about the winner, we can imagine types of scenarios beginning to unfold, including the candidate who appears to be running.” . go ahead at that point trying to claim the winner. ”
An arms race
Both in the scenario of a delay in the results – due to the count by mail or even due to the prosecution – and in the event that one of the two candidates declares the winner before the time, the result can be street demonstrations on both sides of the political spectrum.
In recent months, when groups of Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter protesters met, the result was violence and even deaths.
Credit, Reuters
Biden leads the polls, but supporters fear Trump’s unexpected victory as in 2016, against Hillary Clinton
A figure illustrates the perception of imminent danger surrounding the claim. A September poll by the YouGov Institute found that 74% of Americans bet there will be violence after the election results. For more than half of them (53%), the country will see a lot of violence.
This sentiment explains the behavior of part of the American population in 2020. The American Association of Arms Dealers estimates that some five million Americans decided to buy a firearm for the first time in the first seven months of the year.
And demand for guns and ammunition only increased at pre-screening, to the point where retailer Walmart’s stock ran out in October. Target of protests, the network has even collected weapons and ammunition from its shelves in recent days citing fears of “civil rebellion”, but has returned to the decision. The United States is known for its few restrictions on the arms trade.
Acts of violence are said to be knocking on the doors of the presidential candidates themselves. Last Friday, the Democratic campaign reported that Trump supporters, who were allegedly armed and in a convoy of trucks, surrounded a Biden campaign bus and threatened to pull the vehicle off the road. Videos posted on social media show the bus surrounded by cars with flags of the Republican campaign. The FBI is investigating the incident, which the president called “false.” “In my opinion, these patriots have done nothing wrong,” Trump said.
Tense, and eventually armed and protected by sidings, the Americans will wait, no one knows how long, for the outcome of the elections.
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