Fact: US midterm elections
In the mid-term elections, which will be held on November 8, it will be decided which party will gain power in Washington. Then Americans elect their states’ representatives to the two chambers of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 of the 100 seats in the Senate are at stake. In addition, governors are to be voted for in 36 states and three territories.
The Democrats currently have a majority in the Senate where they have 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote, against 50 seats for the Republicans.
Even in the House of Representatives, the Democrats currently have a majority with 221 to 212 seats.
The mid-term elections are seen as a referendum on how the president conducts himself. The party to which the sitting president belongs usually loses seats in the mid-term elections.
The Republicans are doing well in the polls. If the party takes power in both chambers of Congress, it will be difficult for President Joe Biden to get much done after January 2023.
When Donald Trump tried to nullify the 2020 election that put Joe Biden in the White House, it was the state ministers he called.
“Find 11,780 votes,” he urged Georgia’s state secretary, Republican Brad Raffensperger, in a phone call nearly two months after Election Day.
Raffensperger refused to “find” the votes – they didn’t exist – and Trump, as you know, was forced to resign. But a large part of the Republican Party claims, despite numerous evidence, to this day that the election was rigged.
State ministers have traditionally played a hidden role in American politics. They are in most cases elected by the people, but the position is generally more clerical with mostly administrative tasks that vary slightly from state to state. Their main task is to ensure that the electoral law is followed and that the results are complied with.
Can influence elections
As new state ministers are to be appointed in 27 states during the mid-term elections on November 8, major campaigns have been conducted to elect Trump-loyal election deniers.
— That is what is most worrying about the mid-term elections, says Staffan I Lindberg, professor at the University of Gothenburg and founder of the V-Deminstitutet, which measures and ranks the development of democracy in the world.
He has also been called as a witness in the US Congress’ investigation of what happened on January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, to give statements about the state of American democracy.
Pretty bad, is the answer.
— Around a third of the US population still believes that the 2020 presidential election was marred by extensive electoral fraud and that Trump actually won. Since there is no indication that there was actually cheating, that fact is a huge problem for democracy.
Recording of then-President Donald Trump’s conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is being played in the investigation of the storming of the Capitol. Democracy is put out of play
In practice, state ministers can limit the opportunities for certain groups to vote, for example by changing the rules for early voting or postal voting. After the election, it is the state ministers who authorize the result, including by sending the electors corresponding to the popular vote to appoint the new president.
After the 2020 election, several of them were subjected to pressure with the aim of changing the outcome – including by then President Trump.
Their role is therefore judged to be decisive in the 2024 presidential election.
— I cannot interpret it differently than that the campaigns are now a strategy to try to ensure that you can “win” elections, even if you lose. Then you put democracy completely out of play, says Lindberg.
Republican Mark Finchem, a member of the extremist group Oath Keepers, has a good chance of becoming secretary of state in Arizona. Stock photo. Backed by Trump
Many millions of dollars have according CNN laid on campaigns to make suffragettes state ministers. Donald Trump himself has come out with his support for some of the most extreme candidates. One of them is Republican Mark Finchem, who sits in the House of Representatives today and who is considered to have a good chance of becoming state minister in Arizona. He has described himself as a member of the extremist movement Oath Keepers, one of the groups that, according to the committee investigating the storming of the Capitol, planned the attack.
According to the public service channel PBS 20 Republican candidates for office have outright denied or expressed doubt about the 2020 election results.
Tuesday’s mid-term elections will therefore determine whether politicians who are willing to put the rules of democracy out of play in order to gain power gain more influence or not, says Staffan I Lindberg.
— And if that happens, the risk is that the next presidential election will be a kind of breaking point where the election results are not respected, and America’s democracy thus breaks down.