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Many Americans worry that Donald Trump will not concede defeat in the presidential election. That is understandable, the president has publicly cast doubt on a peaceful transfer of power.
But the real danger lurks elsewhere. It may take weeks for all the votes to be counted and the result is certain. Trump won’t wait that long.
He has a plan B – he will declare himself a winner beforehand, and that could work. The crisis of the crown and the chaotic US electoral system play in the hands of Trump.
Trump has shown several times that he is incapable of accepting a defeat that has occurred democratically. When he lost to then-rival Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican primaries, he spoke of fraud and called for a recall.
But why is Trump casting more doubt on his democratic convictions just weeks before the presidential election? Hopefully this will win over major swing voters in the suburbs.
Trump no longer believes in a regular election victory
The explanation is simple: the president has given up hope of staying in power through normal channels. Polls have seen his Democratic adversary Joe Biden stable for weeks, even in major swing states. All of Trump’s attempts to reduce Biden’s lead have been unsuccessful.
To remain president, Trump has to delegitimize the elections. He has been trying for months. The election will be “the biggest political hoax in history,” he says.
Their attacks are primarily aimed at voting by mail. Due to the crisis of the crown, a record number of citizens will vote by letter. The massive fraud involved “will be an embarrassment to our country,” says Trump.
There is no evidence for this. Voting by mail has been shown in the past to be no more prone to fraud than regular voting at the polls. FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed this only last week.
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Trump’s tirades have an effect that at first glance seems to hurt him. Many Republican voters do not want to vote by mail for fear of imaginary voter fraud. But because Republicans are particularly elected by older citizens who avoid going to the electoral college in times of pandemic, Trump is weakening his own party with his baseless claims.
However, this development suits the president. According to polls, Trump is ahead of voters who want to vote in person. Biden, on the other hand, had an even clearer advantage among postal voters.
The most delicate scenario is the most likely
The scenario that Trump is speculating about and which many experts believe probably looks like this: The president will lead on election night. Only after counting the votes by mail, which takes longer, does Biden catch up. In the end, the Democrat is ahead.
Trump doesn’t want to let it go that far. The result must be known on the night of the elections, he has stressed several times. Therefore, the winner will be declared on election night.
Then the real battle for the outcome of the elections begins. It can take a long time to count all the votes. In this year’s New York primaries, the winners only met after a month.
Trump did everything he could to chaotize the elections. It weakened the post office so that the ballots did not arrive on time. It has blocked the necessary funds that states would have needed to prepare for the onslaught of postal voters. And his party tries by legal means to prevent any initiative that facilitates voting by mail.
As a result, voting by mail has already started in many countries, although the legal issues have yet to be clarified. In the end, hundreds of thousands of votes cast in good faith could prove invalid.
Trump benefits from chaos
The more mess, the better for Trump. This increases the possibility that the election will not be held on a regular basis.
The coffin with the body of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Capitol
Photo: Shawn Thew / AP
Trump has already made clear that he hopes the Supreme Court will ultimately determine the winner of the election. That’s why he wants to fill the Supreme Court seat that was vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the election. If voters don’t give Trump a second term, the justices he appoints should.
It is quite possible that this will happen. In the 2000 presidential election, Republican George W. Bush triumphed over his Democratic rival Al Gore because the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ordered an end to Florida’s vote count. Why shouldn’t that be repeated?
Much is still uncertain. Maybe Trump will win anyway. Perhaps Biden’s advantage is so great that all of the president’s tricks are unsuccessful. The truth is that this time there is more than a change of power in the White House. The future of American democracy is at stake.
