“They
are sending out 51,000,000 Ballots to people who haven’t even
requested a Ballot. Many of those people don’t even exist. They are
trying to STEAL this election. This should not be allowed!”
– Donald
J. Trump, tweet (August 20, 2020)
It is uncertain how Donald
Trump would react to electoral defeat, especially a narrow one. What
if he rejects the result? You think this is just fiction? As
improbable as this reaction may seem, people should consider the
unthinkable.
"If
Trump refuses to accept the election results, we will see the streets
overflow with outraged Americans.”
– Dana
R. Fisher, author of the book American Resistance and a professor of
sociology at the University of Maryland
Some
believe Trump is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep power, His
noxious proposal to postpone the elections is not the real threat to
democracy. He has openly declared that he may not abide by the
election results in a nationally televised interview on Fox News,
recalling a similar threat he made weeks before the 2016 vote.
Trump:
“I have to see. Look
... I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say ‘yes.’ I’m
not going to say ‘no,’ and I didn’t last time, either.”
Trump has
never accepted his popular vote loss -- always repeating the lie that
millions of Democrats voted illegally. Now he is questioning the
legitimacy of an election that will rely on mail-in ballots, even
though he himself has often voted absentee. He has threatened to
withhold funding from states that are trying to make it easier for
people to vote, and he is undermining the U.S. Postal Service, both
of which are essential, especially in a pandemic.
His
Republican allies have been passing voter ID laws, purging voter
rolls, and cutting the number of polling places in urban areas,
forcing people to stand in line for hours to exercise their right to
vote. This is a war on voters who lean Democratic, specifically Black
people, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, naturalized
immigrants, poor people, and young people. We’ve already seen in
Georgia and Wisconsin how these tactics play out on Election Day.
(Frances Fox Piven,
Deepak Bhargava. “What If Trump Won’t Leave?”
The Intercept. August
11, 2020.)
What might happen in a
country where Trumpian presidential narcissism flourishes?
The School of Labor and
Urban Studies (SLU) speaks to the scenario:
“To steal the
election, we suspect he will adapt the standard playbook of
authoritarians everywhere: cast doubt on the election results by
filing numerous lawsuits and launching coordinated federal and state
investigations, including into foreign interference; call on militia
groups to intimidate election officials and instigate violence; rely
on fringe social media to generate untraceable rumors, and on Fox
News to amplify these messages as fact; and create a climate of
confusion and chaos.
“He might ask the
Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security – which
he has now weaponized against democracy – to deploy to big cities
in swing states to stop the vote count or seize ballots. If he does
all this right, he’ll be able to put soldiers on the streets,
inflame his base, and convince millions of people that the election
is being stolen from him.”
(Frances Fox Piven,
Deepak Bhargava. “What If Trump Won’t Leave?”
The Intercept. August
11, 2020.)
If Trump loses the
presidency, he could claim the vote was rigged and rely on a
complicated scheme involving emergency powers and the compliance of
his fellow Republicans to make sure he can stay in power. He would
likely blame mail-in ballots and Chinese election interference for
the loss and invoke emergency powers.
What’s Trump's end game?
Under the Constitution, state legislatures decide how to appoint
electors. From there, he could create a “false justification” for
right-wing state legislatures to appoint Trump-loyal electors. The
legislatures in all of the closely contested states this fall –
Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and North
Carolina – are controlled by Republicans.
It’s hard to conceive
how you justify changing the rules for appointing electors after the
election. But legislators have contemplated it before: Florida’s
Republican legislature seriously considered doing just that in 2000
before the Supreme Court ultimately stepped in. But, if this happens,
the Democrats will challenge the investigation and the challenge to
the election, which would eventually be taken to the US Supreme
Court.
Time has proven Trump will
work to exacerbate any crisis, not resolve it; the Constitution
assumes good faith, and laws intended to regulate voting outcomes are
disastrously vague. In the past, political leaders like Al Gore have
taken measures to insure the peaceful transfer of
power. Gore could have pursued constitutional avenues to claim
victory. Though he had won the popular vote, Gore saw it as his duty
to avoid escalating the electoral crisis.
Lawrence
Douglas, a legal scholar and a professor at Amherst College, says,
“The Presidential elections of 1800 and 1876 ended in
compromises, too, in the spirit of the Constitution, common cause,
and good faith-- all things alien to Donald Trump. It’s not the
compromise that functions as precedent here but the conflict:
election results have been unclear in the past, and they can be
unclear again.”
(Masha Gessen. “What
Could Happen If Donald Trump Rejects Electoral Defeat.”
The New Yorker.
July 21, 2020.)
Trump would likely blame
the Deep State and undocumented immigrants for his loss. Without an
orderly handover during a pandemic and a deep recession, this would
be disastrous to Americans' perception of governmental operations.
“The
best we can expect from President Donald Trump after an electoral
defeat is self-pitying, peevish submission.”
– Lawrence
Douglas
Noah Bookbinder, executive
director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
(CREW) says …
"Members of
Congress and political leaders of both parties, good government
organizations, and regular Americans should right now be condemning
the President's failure to say he will abide by the election results,
and should make clear that they will not stand with him if he does
dispute the results.”
Ryan Thomas, a senior
spokesperson for Stand Up America, told Newsweek that a "large
coalition of groups" was preparing to protest should they feel
necessary. Thomas posits that Americans need to be ready to mobilize if
Trump refuses to concede …
"Trump poses an
existential threat to our democracy and is already working to
undermine the election. Americans need to be ready to mobilize if
Trump refuses to concede—and 'Protect the Results' is organizing a
large coalition of groups to meet the moment if we need to take to
the streets in protest."
(Jacob Jarvis. “If
Trump Rejects Election Results, Streets Could 'Overflow' With
Protesters.” Newsweek. July 22, 2020.)
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