Over the years, many novelists have created fictional American presidents, but no writer of fiction has yet conjured up anyone quite resembling Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, lending further support to the adage that truth can be stranger than fiction. The unique nature of Trump’s presidency has led to many situations without parallel in American history, the latest being the 2020 Presidential election.
Never in the history of parliamentary democracy has it been known for the incumbent leader of a well-established and respected republic, as opposed to a banana republic, to express serious concerns about that very nation’s electoral processes, and that too months in advance. To add to that, the concoction of a massive conspiracy, involving Democrats, agents of the ‘Deep State’, mainstream media outlets (excluding Fox News), opinion pollsters, US Postal Service workers, election officials, and many others, has further served to delegitimise the electoral processes of the US in the eyes of many of his considerable number of supporters. Trump’s interpretation of the election results, which have so far given Democrat candidate Joe Biden a conclusive lead in both the decisive Electoral College votes as well as in the national popular vote, has led him to conclude that victory was unjustly “stolen” from him in face of a landslide of votes cast in his favour.
The issue that has been bothering Donald Trump the most is that of mail-in ballots, which have been part of the electoral process ever since the American Civil War, with even Trump himself having been known to have cast his vote by mail in the past. The postal ballot is indeed the only way some US citizens can cast their vote, including those living abroad, members of the American military, and disabled people and others unable or unwilling to attend polling stations in person. It has also been known for some time that while Republican voters prefer to vote in person at polling booths on Election Day, Democratic voters frequently cast their votes by mail, a trend that has been magnified as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many are worried about congregating in public to cast their votes.
Wide variations between states in the way they handle absentee or mail-in ballots have added to the problems. These ballots are normally mailed to the homes of registered voters. The intended recipient completes the form, which may be printed on special paper to prevent forgery, and then signs it, often in the presence of a witness. The signed ballot is thereafter placed in a return envelope, which has a unique barcode to allow online tracking of the ballot. The sealed envelope may be either returned by post or dropped in person at a secure drop box or polling station. The timing of the process of verification and counting of returned ballots varies between states. Postmarks on return envelopes matter in some states, requiring a date on or before Election Day, but do not count in others. In some states, the process commences before Election Day, while in others this has to be delayed to the actual day and beyond. The deadline for processing returned ballots also varies between states. Despite the fact that in 2020 many more voters cast their votes early, as compared with 2016, many Republican-led state legislatures refused to pass new laws to allow early processing of these ballots. All of these variations in practice thereby further complicated an already complex electoral process.
There is the potential for fraud with absentee or mail-in ballots, as indeed as there is from voter impersonation when it comes to in-person voting. Postal ballots can be misdirected, delayed, lost or even deliberately destroyed. These ballots may also carry the names of deceased people or even non-existent, or “fake”, persons. The process of validation of a ballot by signature verification has its own challenges. Signatures are normally confirmed by either automated or manual processes, against electronic versions of the voter’s signature on a driver’s licence or other official record, before the cleared ballots are scanned into a counting machine. It is not surprising that isolated and anecdotal reports of voter fraud do indeed surface from time to time. But there has never been any conclusive evidence of a systematic attempt at distorting elections through massive mail fraud, a problem which Trump’s lawyers are having to contend with as they continue to actively seek out examples of fraud and to file lawsuits in many battleground states as part of their last-ditch attempts to restore the outgoing 45th President back to the White House.
Those unwilling to accept the election results as being fair and representative are pointing towards the delayed surges of voter numbers in favour of Biden, a so-called blue shift phenomenon, after Trump initially took a lead in some battleground states. Their allegations are that many fraudulent votes were cast in favour of Biden, and that the electoral process did little to detect and manage this presumed fraud. At the time of writing, Trump has refused to accept the election results and to concede defeat to Biden. Such a situation has never happened before in American history. Outgoing presidents, including those serving only one term, have consistently conducted themselves with dignity, graciously accepting the election result and then participating in a smooth and peaceful transition process. This is why the 2020 election will not be forgotten for a long time to come. The hope is that such a fractious, at times chaotic and disrespectful, event will never happen again. America is a great country, and works much better when its citizens are able to coexist peacefully, despite their differences, under the banner of democracy, and not when it is fractured and divided into opposing camps that deeply mistrust each other. Maybe 2021 will turn out to be a better year after all.
Ashis Banerjee