Donald Trump’s supporters have gotten their representatives into important positions in the electoral system. These individuals may interfere with the validation of local results.
The United States may face a chaotic era after the presidential election if the Republican nominee Donald Trump lose the election.
Trump has already begun to prepare for this possibility. Newspapers The New York Times and Financial Times have listed scenarios of what could happen after Trump’s possible defeat.
1. Allegations of fraud
In the closing stages of the election campaign, Trump and his allies have adopted a strategy that utilizes the 2020 presidential election playbook.
Trump’s current campaign has been based on the claim that he was cheated out of victory in the previous election. The claim is not true.
Now Trump has already started accusing the Democrats of cheating in this election.
His allies in the Libra states lend support. They spread distorted information about individual errors at the polls as evidence of large-scale fraud, writes The New York Times.
An important factor in the spread of fraud allegations is Trump’s supporter Elon Musk. The technology billionaire Musk owns the messaging service X, where there are many allegations of election fraud. Musk himself has participated in sharing them.
2. Declaring a winner
In the 2020 election, Trump prematurely declared himself the winner when he led the vote count in several states in the United States.
Trump tried to take advantage of the information that a large number of Democrats had voted by mail.
Postal votes are counted at a later stage of the vote count. That’s why, for example, in the decisive state of Pennsylvania, it took a few days before all the votes were counted and Joe Biden was declared the winner.
In the early stages of Trump’s presidency, worked as the White House’s chief strategist and Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon was released from prison last week.
Shortly afterward, he told reporters that Trump should act “preemptively” on election night, declaring himself the winner and saying his team is working to prevent the election result from being stolen. There is no evidence that the Democrats intend to rig the election.
Now known as a podcast host, Bannon is still a Trump supporter. He has spread baseless claims that the result of the 2020 presidential election was based on fraud.
3. Interference with confirmation of results
The activist movement supporting Trump has succeeded in getting its allies into important positions in the electoral system.
Pro-Trump people have been appointed, for example, as election observers and workers, as well as local authorities whose task it is to confirm local results.
There are loopholes in the new US election law that Trump could take advantage of, The New York Times estimates. For example, the law sets a deadline by which states must submit final, certified election results to Washington before the Electoral College votes for president.
Some of the authorities supporting Trump have suggested that in the event of a defeat, the confirmation of the election results could be delayed beyond the deadline at the local level.
Many things have changed since 2020
Trump is no longer a sitting president, so he cannot use the administration to challenge the election result.
In addition, a new election law has entered into force. Its goal is to counter efforts to prevent Congress from confirming the election results.
The Republican-leaning news channel Fox News, which spread allegations of fraud in the previous elections, is unlikely to be as eager to share false information. It had to pay huge compensations to the voting machine company for spreading baseless claims related to election fraud.