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Sunday 01 November 2020
A record share is emerging in the United States. Republicans are using legal means to prevent hundreds of thousands of early votes from being counted. Meanwhile, President Trump swears to his supporters that they will have chaotic weeks.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has warned his supporters that they may have to wait several weeks to know the result of the elections next Tuesday. “The whole world and our country will wait and wait and wait to find out who won, they will wait weeks,” Trump said Saturday during a performance in Newton, Pennsylvania. “November 3 will come and go and we won’t know. And there will be chaos in our country.”
Trump did not refer this warning to rioting in the streets, but to the counting of votes by mail. Republicans had tried to avoid extending a deadline for counting electoral documents in Pennsylvania, but their attempt failed. Therefore, postal voting documents postmarked on time must be posted, even if they arrive three days after the November 3 election date.
In a close race between Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the outcome in Pennsylvania could count, and neither Republicans nor Democrats can count on a majority in the “Swing State.” Trump accused the Washington Supreme Court of having made a “terrible, political, terrible decision” regarding the vote-by-mail deadline. He warned that “very bad things” and something “dangerous” could happen while the ballots are counted. Trump did not provide more detailed explanations and evidence for his indictment. For months, the president has been campaigning against the mail vote, the experience of which shows that there are more Democratic voters than Republican supporters to cast their votes.
Republicans want 100,000 votes invalidated
Meanwhile, in the hard-fought state of Texas in the United States, a legal battle is looming over the validity of around 100,000 votes that have already been cast in a so-called direct vote. A federal judge in Texas scheduled an emergency hearing Monday on whether Houston authorities illegally allowed voting. Voters can deposit their ballots in the corresponding polls from the car. In Harris County, one of the nation’s largest electoral districts with 4.7 million people, ten of these polling stations have been established because of the crown pandemic. Conservative activist Steve Hotze and Texas Republican Rep. Steve Toth, among others, had filed suit.
They accuse Harris County officials of having exceeded their constitutional authority. They ask federal judge Andrew Hanen to “reject all votes that they believe have violated Texas electoral law.” Hanen was appointed by then-Republican President George W. Bush. The request was “completely unreasonable,” he said from the Democratic field. “The plaintiffs are asking this court to wreak havoc in the Texas elections by invalidating the votes of more than 100,000 eligible Texas voters,” he said.
