One of the main distinguishing features of American democracy is the so-called indirect voting.
This means that the winner of the presidential election is not determined by popular vote, but by a collegium of 538 electors representing all states of the United States, in proportion to the population of a particular state.
To win, a candidate needs to collect at least 270 votes of the electoral college, and it is not at all necessary to become the winner of a popular vote.
For example, in 2016, Donald Trump himself received the required number of electoral votes, but lost to Hillary Clinton in terms of the number of citizens' votes.
This system was formed at the beginning of the 19th century so that in the United States, with a very heterogeneous population density at that time, power was not concentrated in the hands of residents of large cities.
However, over time, this led to the fact that the outcome of the elections is decided in several "key" states, success in which can ensure victory for one or another candidate.
Unreliable electors
It is worth noting that over the past decades in the United States, the question has been raised more than once that the institution of the electoral college impedes democratic expression of will.
Indeed, there is no amendment in the country's constitution that state electors must follow the results of a popular vote.
For example, in the 2016 presidential election, four electors from Washington State, where the Democrats won, cast their votes not for Hillary Clinton, but for other politicians.
Such cases are far from uncommon.
US Presidential Voting
AFP
© SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA
The electoral college vote for the new US president will be held on December 14.
Before that, Trump's campaign headquarters and his supporters have time to challenge the results of elections in key states in courts of various instances and influence their outcome.
Only after the votes of the electors are counted by the US Congress, this or that candidate will actually be elected president.
This does not prevent the media from announcing the winner based on exit poll data and their mathematical models.
It may seem that the outcome of the elections has already been decided, although in reality it is not.
For example, during these elections, the Associated Press and Fox News announced Biden's victory in the key state of Arizona on election day with 11 electoral votes, while other media still did not recognize the state as a Democrat.
Opaque processes
The very process of elections and counting of votes in the United States is controlled by the authorities of the states and constituencies - in America there is no central election commission in the usual sense.
The US Federal Election Commission, despite its name, deals only with campaign finance and does not participate in organizing, monitoring, or calculating the results.
This leads to the fact that different states organize the counting of votes differently.
In some states, important for the outcome of the elections, it is not finished yet.
Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that this gives rise to manipulation, and urged not to count the ballots received at the polling stations after they were closed by mail.
In addition, US elections are traditionally difficult to reach for international observers.
In 18 states, including key states, foreign observers are not allowed at all.
In 2020, the OSCE dispatched about 100 observers to the US elections.
They sided with Biden and accused Trump of “flagrant abuse of power” when he demanded that the counting be stopped.
A separate problem is the issue of voter registration.
In some states, it is extremely confusing and bureaucratic.
At the same time, some "progressive" states do not even require identification cards, as a result of which non-citizen migrants take part in the elections.
Bipartisan diktat
The American electoral system works almost exclusively for the two main parties - Republicans and Democrats.
The so-called "third" parties (of which the largest are Libertarian, Green and Constitutional) have an undeserved reputation for frivolous organizations or political spoilers.
Local authorities often create bureaucratic obstacles for them.
So, in the 2020 elections, the Supreme Courts of the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ruled to exclude candidates from the Green Party from the ballots.
However, even the American media admits that this is beneficial for the Democrats, whose votes could be drawn by the "green".
Reporting violations
The biggest criticism of this election is due to the confusion that
voting by mail.
The counting of votes has been delayed, since in some states, for example, in Nevada, you can count until November 12, and take ballots until November 10.
Trump's campaign headquarters has announced massive fraud across the country and is demanding a recount in key states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and others.
In these states, an unexpected jump in votes in the mail in favor of Biden was recorded, which did not fit into the general mathematical trend and changed the course of voting.
Wisconsin counting chart with unexpected jump for Biden
Trump supporters claim that this is evidence of ballot box stuffing for Biden, but there is no official confirmation of this.
Later, the media reported that a typo was made in the Shayawassi district: instead of 15,371 voters, 153,710 were indicated. This number even exceeds the population of the district - about 70 thousand people live there.
The error caused Biden's total Michigan tally to rise to 2,130,695. The error is said to have been corrected later.
However, other violations were reported during the current elections.
According to the Michigan Republican chairman, 6,000 Republican ballots have been mistakenly counted for Democrats in at least one county due to an error in the computer program that counted.
At the same time, the same software was used in another 47 constituencies - which is about 300 thousand votes.
According to the office of the state secretary of state, there was a human factor - the responsible officer forgot to update the program.
A video appeared on the network: an employee of the election commission in Delaware (a district in Pennsylvania) manually fills in an empty ballot when counting votes.
The explanation of the commission was as follows: the employee "manually enters votes from damaged ballots" that the scanner did not read.
It is alleged that there were observers from both parties nearby - they simply cannot be seen on footage.
Here's video pulled from the Delaware County, PA live stream of a ballot worker filling out ballots.
pic.twitter.com/AdgOzDb8JN
- Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) November 6, 2020
Also on Twitter, a video is circulating: in Fulton County, Georgia, an electoral commissioner crumpled a ballot.
The footage shows a man gesticulating, nervously sorting through the sheets, and then crumples one of them.
The video received about 5 million views.
Fox News reported that a Clark County, Nevada electoral officer spoke of the fraud he witnessed.
According to him, ballots were processed at the polling station, on which there were no voters' signatures.
Trump's campaign claims that in Nevada, a group of people in a car with the words "Biden-Harris" tore open mail envelopes with ballots.
And when they realized that they were being watched, they formed a wall of people around the car, blocking what was happening from outside observers.
The Philadelphia branch of the Republican Party claims that the vote was taken into account by deceased voters.
So, on the website of the state election committee, voters were found, 45 of whom were born in the 19th century, and another 39 were witnesses of the American Civil War.
In at least one polling station in Michigan, Republican observers were denied the opportunity to follow the tally of votes sent by mail.
After Trump supporters demanded to stop processing the ballots, many observers were removed.
And the employees of the site covered the windows with large sheets so that no one could track the process.
US polling station
AFP
© ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
The Nevada Republican Party has reported thousands of complaints about the electoral process.
Thousands of votes, the party said in a statement, were counted without any intelligible Republican observation at all.
Pennsylvania is also talking about not allowing observers.
Trump's headquarters filed a lawsuit against the state secretary of state over the election results.
In Arizona, Trump's headquarters filed a lawsuit over uncounted votes in the largest district of Maricopa, with a population of about 4 million.
It is alleged that mistaken actions by employees when operating the voting machines resulted in some ballots not being counted.
However, it is not specified exactly how many votes might have been left out.
Since it was the Democrats who cast the majority of the distance votes, it was beneficial for Biden's camp to count as many of these votes as possible.
Therefore, Biden's supporters in several states through the courts managed to achieve the maximum extension of the reception and counting of votes after the election day itself (which is why in some states the count has not yet been completed).
In addition, in some states, voters are allowed to correct errors in rejected ballots (for example, incorrectly signed ballots) and resubmit ballots.
Biden's team, for example, orchestrated door-to-door rounds of such voters to help them correct the ballots and ultimately count as many votes as possible.
Before the election, Twitter and Facebook became famous for having "crushed" the material of The New York Post about a laptop with incriminating materials on Joe Biden's son Hunter.
The link to this article could not even be shared on Twitter, and The New York Post was blocked after the first publication.
At the same time, many of Trump's "election" tweets, mostly accusing the Democrats of preparing fraud, began to hide "unproven information" behind the badge.