American liberals are in ecstatic horror. Donald Trump finally said it. He is going to postpone the elections. The mainstream media and Democratic politicians have long argued that the 45th US president will definitely do something illegal and highly authoritarian in order not to give up power. And now it happened!
But what exactly happened? What again shook the opposition with the "impossible Donald"?
On Thursday, he tweeted, “With universal suffrage by mail (not absentee ballot, he's fine), the 2020 election will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent election ever. It will be a big embarrassment for the United States. Postpone elections until people can vote correctly, reliably and safely ??? "
That is, Trump has once again expressed his point of view on voting by mail, which, in his opinion, is unreliable, opaque and provides a wide scope for falsification. Better to postpone the vote. However, after a few hours, the US President announced that he did not want to postpone anything. But he also does not want the massive use of absentee voting.
Democrats insist that there is no evidence of massive fraud in the mailing of ballots. Remote voting, in their opinion, is fair and, most importantly, safe in the context of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They respond to the demand for full-time presence of voters at polling stations with angry accusations: "It will cost many lives!" No compromise is foreseen.
In the United States, in this citadel of democracy, it is very difficult to exercise the right to vote. To begin with, simply having reached the age of 18, you cannot come to the polling station and vote for the candidate you like. You still have to get on the voter lists. For this, a voter registration procedure is provided. Become an adult or move to another city - please visit your local electoral commission and make sure you are included in the voting list.
Further. Voting takes place on a weekday (the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November). Therefore, the maximum influx of voters at the polling stations is observed in the morning and evening, when people are not at work. Sometimes there are long queues. Some working Americans, wishing to fulfill their civic duty, begin to watch at the polling place at night.
But that's not all. In most states, voter lists are in dire condition. Some of them have not yet been digitized. A citizen who does not want to receive an unexpected surprise on election day should bear this in mind. Therefore, politically active citizens regularly check their registration. But the problems with lists don't end there. The fact is that the dead and those who left the electoral district are not removed quickly enough from them.
In itself, this would not be something that threatens the integrity of the electoral process. If not for the vote by mail.
The lists for the distribution of ballots are copied (and at different intervals in different districts) from the voter lists. Often, the two lists are kept separate and differ significantly from each other. And if, in face-to-face voting, a citizen who has died or left for another state will be considered, according to the results of the elections, simply not to come to the polling station, with a remote expression of will he becomes a big problem. The bulletins will go to the "dead souls". And there are many of them. More than once or twice, public figures caught election commissions on the discrepancy between the number of voters registered in this district and continuing to live in it with the list, which is used to form the mailing list of ballots. But things are still there.
Tidying up America's voter lists is an almost impossible task. This is not due to some genetic propensity of Americans to be disorderly or lack of computing power. The lists of voters, the order of their formation and even the “holes” in them are a political issue.
Republicans traditionally insist that every person who comes to the polling station must present an identity card during face-to-face voting, and the mailing of ballots is kept to a minimum. Democrats call these demands "infringement of voting rights" (or "suppression of voting") and, as usual, "racism." The struggle goes on constantly and with varying success. The discrepancy between mailing lists for voting and reality is in its own way beneficial to both parties.
As a result, voting by mail becomes a source of various embarrassments every time. It is also impossible not to send ballots - the right to cast your vote remotely is recorded in the laws of all fifty states and is enshrined in a decision of the Supreme Court. If a person wants to receive a ballot by mail, they must send it to him. That's just not at all the fact that the shipment will be delivered to the applicant. And if this does happen, then there is no guarantee that the person will not vote a second time in person and that his fraud will be revealed.
During the 2016 elections, electoral commissions mailed 41.6 million ballots, according to the US Federal Election Commission. Of these, more than 568 thousand were not delivered to the addressees (that is, there was an official mark of the postal service about the absence of a person at this address), almost 320 thousand were rejected (this is the voter's right to refuse to take a ballot), but the main thing is that almost 6 million ballots are simply disappeared on the way back. Two years later, in the 2018 midterm elections, the situation was even worse. About 42.4 million ballots were mailed to voters. Of these, more than 1 million turned out to be impossible to deliver to the addressee, more than 430 thousand were rejected and almost 10.5 million disappeared at the stage of return shipment. That is, up to a quarter of the ballots go missing.
There are currently approximately 154 million registered voters in the United States. In a presidential election year, the turnout is 135-140 million.
If you follow the recommendations of the Democrats, all these people will have to send out ballots. First, it will be an unprecedented burden on the US Postal Service, which is not doing very well anyway. Secondly, one should prepare for the fact that in the best scenario, 30-35 million ballots will be lost.
In no other "non-democratic" country in the world, the United States would not recognize the elections as legitimate and transparent with so many votes that have disappeared.
With the current intensity of political struggle, voting by mail is a direct path to abuse and the creation of reasons for a fully justified non-recognition of the election results by the losing party. Perhaps this is exactly what the Democrats want. Or maybe they just hope to turn the elections into a permanent revolutionary process. For nothing, perhaps, are the detachments of angry African Americans and antifa thugs “warming up” on the streets? The most pessimistic Republican politicians believe that the results of voting in each state will be "drawn" by the governors.
This will be a very unfavorable scenario for Trump. Therefore, apparently, he provoked a discussion about the postponement of the elections. He opposed the threat of total postal voting with the threat of changing the voting date. But how realizable is such a threat?
The most common answer to this question is that the elections can be postponed, but this is not in the power of the president. According to the Constitution, the time and order of elections is determined by the Congress. He set a floating date for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. He can change this date, but the split US legislature is unlikely to be able to make such a decision. In addition, in the entire history of the United States, no circumstances have interfered with the holding of regular elections with full-time voter turnout on time - not the civil war in the 19th century, not the Spanish flu pandemic in the early 20th century, not the Great Depression, not the Second World War, not the terrorist attacks 11 September.
There is one more legal aspect that must be taken into account. On January 3, 2021, the re-elected Congress is due to meet on Capitol Hill. And on January 20, 2021, the person who won the election must be in the Oval Office. It is chosen by electors appointed by the states. The decision of the electors is approved by the Senate, after which the new (or re-elected) head of state gets the right to enter the White House (or stay in it). In a word, the date of the elections can be moved, but the dates of legitimation of the Congressmen and the President by these elections cannot.
However, here begins a gray zone, which, in my opinion, will now be investigated by experts on electoral and constitutional law, as well as party functionaries. The fact is that the composition of delegates to the electoral college from each state is not formed by the citizens who voted, but by the electoral committee of that state.
Under normal circumstances, the electors bring voters' mandates with them to Washington, but in extreme circumstances they can decide the outcome of the presidential race as they see fit.
There is no direct prohibition on this in the Constitution.
Moreover, if the election of a Rep or Senator for any reason has not revealed a winner, the Governor can appoint federal interim legislators. In some states there is a local legislature. And then the already extraordinarily convened renewed congress will decide whether to approve the decision of the extraordinarily assembled electoral college.
If, for some reason, the electoral college cannot decide who should be the next president of the United States, the head of state is appointed by the House of Representatives, and the vice president is appointed by the Senate. Unlike all other hypothetical situations, this collision happened in American history. John Quincy Adams became head of state by decision of Congress, since none of the presidential candidates in 1824 won a majority (50% plus one) of the electoral vote.
In general, if American politicians try hard, they can finally turn the 2020 elections into a farce. Then, when it ends, they will certainly refer to the American Constitution, which helped to legitimately choose the head of state at a difficult time for the country. The whole world will be told: look, this is the triumph of the law, this is democracy in action.
Taking into account the international situation and the stakes in the new global competition, it is not worthwhile to silently agree with this, in my opinion. Farce should be called a farce. And a laughing stock. And confusion. It is another matter that all this undoubted disgrace is, of course, an internal affair of the United States of America. But only until the transatlantic nuclear superpower finally slid into the abyss of civil war.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.