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SThe scenarios for how an electoral disaster could unfold in the United States next week involve lawsuits, lost votes, armed insurrection and other potential crises in thousands of local jurisdictions on November 3.
But there is a much simpler scenario for the chaos of election night, centered in only one direction, that many analysts consider among the most plausible.
The scenario can be avoided, election officials say, raising public awareness of it and warning to be vigilant against the carefully targeted lies that Donald Trump has already begun to tell.
Known as the “red mirage,” the scenario could unfold if Trump appears to lead the presidential race late on election night and declares victory before all the votes are counted.
The red mirage “sounds like a supervillain, and it is just as insidious”, the former Secretary of Housing of the Obama administration, Julían Castro. says in a video registered as a public service announcement for voters this week.
“On election night, there is a real chance that the data will show Republicans leading early, before all the votes are counted. Then they can pretend something sinister is happening when the counts change in favor of the Democrats. “
On stage, Trump’s declaration of victory is repeated on the conservative television network Fox News and the powerful Republicans in the United States. By the time the final results show that Joe Biden did indeed win the presidency, perhaps days later, the actual election result has been dragged into a maelstrom of misinformation and chaos.
For some officials, the scenario is too realistic for words. A possible delay of several days in the counting of votes is anticipated in Philadelphia, whose mostly Democratic votes are crucial for Biden to win in Pennsylvania, currently the state that the quants consider is most likely to tilt the election in one direction or another. other.
After counting just 6,000 absent ballots in the 2016 election, the city of Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, expects to receive and count up to 400,000 mail-in ballots this year, with the coronavirus pandemic.
All of those ballots will be counted inside the city’s cavernous convention center on Arch Street, beginning at 7 a.m. on Election Day, by an army of poll workers, including many new recruits, using recently purchased equipment.
The delay that officials know will be needed to finish the count could be enough time for Trump to cast doubt on the outcome, an effort the president has already begun.
“Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said in the first presidential debate in September, warning of “tens of thousands of ballots being tampered with” and “urging my people” to carefully monitor polling sites, despite the fact that there is no evidence of widespread fraud in US Elections.
Current and former Pennsylvania officials and activists say the antidote to the “red mirage” is as simple as the stage itself.
The public must understand, these officials say, that Philadelphia will not be able to report the outcome of its elections on the night of November 3, and may not be able to do so during the days after, due to the extraordinary circumstances that the pandemic has caused.
In turn, Philadelphia’s surge in Democratic votes, when they arrive, will likely create the perception of a big shift in the state toward Biden. And finally, that change could be big enough to erase a clue that Trump could accumulate in rural counties in other parts of the state, so that it appears to shift Pennsylvania from “red” to “blue,” and potentially decide the entire election. .
“Not all votes will be counted before midnight on November 3,” said Tom Ridge, former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and George W Bush’s secretary of homeland security, who condemns Trump’s “utterly despicable conduct and rhetoric” about the elections.
“Due to Covid-19, there will be millions of votes by mail that will take several days to count,” Ridge said in a telephone interview. “One of the ways to reduce the level of anxiety is to remind Americans of that reality and ask for peace and patience so that every vote can be counted.”
The creepy thing about the Red Mirage scenario, to some analysts, is that some aspects of it seem more like a certainty than a scenario.
“People need to know that there will be no result on election night,” said Lisa Deeley, chair of a three-member panel of Philadelphia city commissioners that runs the election. “Then people will go to bed and we will not finish that count. But we’ll work continuously, overnight, to make sure we get that count as quickly and accurately; We will not sacrifice precision for speed. “
“The key term is ‘election week,'” said Patrick Christmas, policy director for the nonpartisan Committee of the Seventy for Good Governance in Philadelphia. “There will no longer be an election day here.”
However plausible it may be, there are also many reasons why a “red mirage” scenario might not play out. Biden could postpone the race with a victory earlier on election night in a key state on the battlefield like Florida. Or Biden could win the state of Pennsylvania, where it leads by 6 points in the poll averages, without needing the last 200,000 votes from Philadelphia.
Alternatively, a “red mirage” for Trump could unfold in other parts of the country, outside of Philadelphia, anywhere a large city in an undecided state, from Milwaukee to Miami to Cleveland, ends up taking a long time to report results.
But the enormous task Philadelphia faces in counting an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots while looking at social distancing and other coronavirus mitigation measures means the city is in an exceptionally difficult place.
Making life more difficult for Philadelphia election officials, negotiations broke down last week between the Republican-led state legislature and the Democratic governor to allow mail ballot processing, which means removing ballots from their envelopes. and smooth them out for insertion into counting machines – before Election Day.
Florida allows weeks for processing as early as North Carolina, Arizona, and other battlefield states do, making it possible for those states to report results immediately on election night. Wisconsin, another key battlefield, has no early processing, while Michigan only allows one day for early processing.
“It’s very sad for me, it’s very worrying, that the political parties have not agreed on this,” said Ridge, who participates in two bipartisan organizations to secure the ballot, Vote Safe and the National Council for Electoral Integrity.
At the Pennsylvania Convention Center in downtown Philadelphia, mail-in ballots are already in place, locked up, waiting for Election Day.
Immediately at 7 am, officials will begin feeding ballots into new extraction machines that use suction cups to open the outer ballot envelopes so officials can remove an internal privacy envelope containing the ballot. Then the ballot must go through the extraction machine again. The ballot must then be smoothed out and then go through a counting machine.
Many representatives from each party will be allowed into the convention center to observe the process, but arrangements for the media to be inside have been shelved. Any ballot whose validity is contested, perhaps because the voter forgot to use the inner envelope, resulting in a so-called “naked” ballot, must be reviewed by commissioners in a process that has not been publicly described.
“There are defiance guidelines that are outlined in the state election code, and we will follow those guidelines,” Deeley said.
Some election observers fear that the presence inside the hall of Trump supporters could create an opportunity to wreak havoc, especially with concerns about the coronavirus, which could disrupt the operation in a way that could allow Trump to amplify his allegations of fraud in Philadelphia
Deeley said election officials were prepared for attempts to alter the election.
“There is security at the convention center,” he said, noting statements by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner that the city was ready to prosecute election-related crimes.
“He announced that he is ready to go, and that will not be allowed on Election Day in Philadelphia.”
In every election, voters trust their neighbors to volunteer as poll workers to count the election results, and that trust is just as well placed this year as it was in years past, no matter what Trump says, Ridge said.
“That he suggests that these local officials would engage in deliberate, intentional massive fraud, in order to discredit or delegitimize the process, is unfathomable and unpresidential,” Ridge said.
“Hopefully, we have started vaccinating and educating Americans on the need for patience so that every vote can be counted.”
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