A week after the most uncertain presidential elections in recent history, around 50 million eligible citizens have already voted in the United States. Which corresponds to almost a third of the total of 155 million who helped elect Joe Biden in 2020, recording one of the absolute records of participation in the most crucial electoral competition in America.
Whether this round will beat that record, it’s too early to say. But – here’s the point – in the meantime the protests have already begun. And this is also because the Supreme Court (the highest US legal body, where the Republicans have an overwhelming majority of 6 judges to 3) has just allowed the State of Virginia to implement a program that allows state officials to «remove suspected non-citizens from the electoral lists”. Which means not allowing people to vote who apparently do not appear to be fully eligible to vote.
Even if Virginia is already assigned to the Republicans and is not a fighting state, it is not among the so-called swing states that can decide the election (these are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the two candidates are separated in the polls by less than one percentage point), the same thing could happen in other states.
This episode alone is indicative of the climate prevailing in the United States, and is a prelude to new disputes over the victory assignments of the individual states, which with their respective delegates contribute to electing the president. This could force the electoral college of Congress to carry out one or more recounts already the day after the vote on November 5, and open up a phase of political and economic uncertainty, as well as discontent among the population which, if exploited by one or both parties, could take to the streets and even become the protagonist of widespread violence.
By 2020, the legal battle that followed recount requests in key states like Georgia had taken on such a fiercely political tone that Trump and others seized upon it to fuel false narratives of fraud and obstruction of the then-president. “We will never give up, we will stop the theft of votes,” Trump thundered at a rally organized in the capital where thousands of his supporters had gathered. “We are here to demand that Congress do the right thing, and only count electors who have been legally appointed.” And again: «If Mike Pence (the vice president at the time, ed.) does the right thing we will win the elections. The presidency belongs to the Americans.”
This, as is known, led to the assault on Capitol Hill on that famous January 6, 2021, where 5 people died and many were injured. Only by a miracle was the situation resolved: after hours in which Trump’s supporters had penetrated the political heart of the capital (loitering in the corridors and conference halls, taking selfies in the political offices of the House and Senate and, in one case, even defecating on a deputy’s desk), the crowd broke up disorderly but peacefully.
Now, after around 1,600 voter registrations – which had not been subjected to a complete check of citizenship status – were cancelled, a first crack is appearing in the granitic Stars and Stripes electoral machine. Seen from Europe, the American electoral process itself appears cumbersome and outdated because, among other things, that system provides that, in order to cast one’s vote, one must pre-register according to rules which, moreover, change from time to time. State in State and on which it is not appropriate to dwell here.
What is important to know, rather, is that – as well-informed sources in Washington DC state – in this round there is a real risk that America will wake up without the certainty of a winner, that it will therefore not be possible to nominate a new president in a short time, and that all this could lead not only to recounts and bureaucratic delays, but also to new protests, perhaps raising the fear of fraud around the outcome of the vote according to convenience.
In such an eventuality, the hypothesis that such protests could last for months, potentially triggering an institutional short circuit and – God forbid – an open clash between Democrats and Republicans, or worse between pro-Trump and anti-Trump, should not be underestimated. which could also degenerate into violent acts.
There are all the precedents: not to mention the assault on Congress which has led to a political climate full of hatred, suffice it to mention Donald Trump himself who, together with other Republicans, in 2020 leveraged complaints of illegal voting, starting from the Georgia State, to try to explain the defeat four years ago. Even today, in his rallies, Trump uses the “stolen election” card to rally a broad consensus around himself. Furthermore, this strategy seems to work well and, however you judge it, it has made inroads into the minds of many undecided people, despite the fact that documented cases of non-citizens voting have always been extremely rare, and even less so in 2020 have there been any frauds or irregularities in voting .
A recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people registered found only 20 registered noncitizens, of whom only 9 had voted. While in the manual recount of contested ballots in 2020, the State of Georgia confirmed Joe Biden’s victory: after the recount of 5 million votes, the Secretary of State’s office confirmed that Biden had obtained 49.5% of preferences against Trump’s 49.3%: a difference of 12,284 votes, equal to just 0.2% compared to the initial 0.3% (12,780 votes).
The Virginia case is obviously different: which began last August with an order signed by the governor of Virginia, the Republican Glenn Youngkin, it simply carried out a control on those who qualified to vote, now also sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Donald Trump himself applauded Virginia’s initiative, calling it “a sensible way to ensure that non-citizens don’t vote”, while for the Biden Administration, Virginia’s system has potentially disqualified an unknown number of citizens.
The issue is far from over. Indeed, the nightmare of too close to call, i.e. a margin that is too narrow to assign the victory of a state to one or the other candidate, is plain to see and already offers support to those who prophesy frauds and mix-ups. Not only that: as in 2000, a “Florida case” could happen again. At the time, George W. Bush won the state’s number of electors (25) by just 537 votes out of nearly 6 million. And with those 25 delegates he was able to exceed the overall number of 270 Great Electors who earned him the presidency. This scenario, even more than the violence and the “civil war”, is not at all unlikely to be repeated again in 2024. Especially considering that the margin of separation between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as a whole is less than 3%. Too close to call.
