Status: 08/23/2022 03:36 a.m
The current primary elections in the USA are seen as a mood test for a possible renewed Trump candidacy. It turns out that large parts of the Republicans support his lie about electoral fraud. The US democracy is threatened with an ordeal.
Governors, secretaries of state, prosecutors. In the US they are elected. And even if their sphere of influence is limited to their respective state, their decisions can have far-reaching consequences. For example in presidential elections.
It is these people who are responsible for the elections. They set the rules, who counts the votes – and they are ultimately responsible for defending the voters’ will, Joanna Lydgate tells NPR radio.
Lydgate is President of States United. Her organization monitors the current primaries and documents which states have candidates running for which offices who support Trump in his lie that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud.
Dozens of electoral deniers are running
According to this, more than 50 electoral deniers are running for governorship and over 20 for the office of secretary of state in various states. That should be of great concern to everyone in the US, says Paul Herrson, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut.
Whoever sits in these offices can change the electoral laws depending on the state. For example, voter registration. Since there is no registration office in the USA, everyone who wants to vote must register beforehand. However, identification does not always require a driver’s license, which is used here like an identity card. If the regulation were changed, people without a driver’s license would be excluded for the time being, explains Herrnson.
The number of polling stations and poll workers could be reduced. This would make the queues longer. This would lead some voters to see the long lines and not vote.
Parliaments have to play their part
However, these scenarios presuppose that the parliaments in the respective states also play their part. It is not possible to arbitrarily change laws on your own.
In states like Alabama, Arizona, Michigan or Wisconsin, where the Republicans hold the majority and pro-Trump candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general are nominated by their party, such political maneuvers cannot be ruled out.
Counts can be obstructed
The influence of these offices extends not only to the time before the election, but also afterwards.
They could simply refuse to allow certain votes or initiate investigations that prevent further counting. Or: They simply refuse to recognize the election result in order to stall the presidential election.
Extreme scenarios are no longer improbable
The most extreme move, according to Paul Herrnson, would be directly influencing the way a presidential election is run.
The presidency in the United States is not directly elected. Citizens elect electors in their state, who in turn elect their party’s presidential nominee—the so-called electoral college. Their votes are then confirmed by the US Congress and the election is declared valid.
Mr. Herrson does not think it is out of the question that heads of state loyal to Trump could try to invalidate the official 2024 electors and use their own loyal ones.
They could reject the electorate, appoint their own electors, count their votes, and send them to Washington.
What may sound absurd was tried and failed in the Trump camp in 2020. For example in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada. Paul Herrson and several civil rights movements and election observers such as States United believe that another attempt in 2024 is far from impossible.