Victory is inevitable, defeat is unacceptable. The former President of the USA and now the Republican Party candidate for the United States elections on November 5 is convinced he will win by a large margin. He believes he overwhelmingly won in 2020 and was a victim of theft. He is convinced that this year's elections are fraudulent, or rather, that they already are, and he is a victim. But he also believes he will prevail again and that when he does, he will also send to jail, for many years, the officials responsible for overseeing the process.
Less than two months remain until the election, and just a few hours until Trump and Kamala Harris face off on ABC in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, one of the contested states), but the political climate in the USA is particularly tense. The debate will likely focus on the economy, immigration, or abortion, but underlying it is a clear concern for the day after. Four years ago, the leader of the Republicans and the MAGA movement (Make America Great Again) did not accept the result and tried all sorts of maneuvers to overturn it. He failed, but it ended with many of his collaborators behind bars in one way or another and fines of tens of millions of dollars for campaigns of harassment and defamation against election officials in various states.
Far from being deterred, Trump redoubles efforts in 2024 and increases the rhetoric even more. He does not hide it. In a message on his social media, he warned that he and his team are monitoring everyone. "WHEN I WIN, those who CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including long prison sentences so that this perversion of justice does not happen again," he wrote. "Please note that this warning extends to lawyers, political agents, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought, captured, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country," he added.
The irony is that the only ones being investigated for something like this are him and his team, including a formal accusation on four different charges in the case led by special prosecutor Jack Smith. Another separate case of electoral interference in Fulton County, Georgia, has been indefinitely suspended.
It's not just talk. Over the weekend, Trump gave wide circulation to baseless accusations from an alleged election expert made in a conversation with Tucker Carlson, Trump's favorite presenter and former Fox star, who left after the network had to pay $787 million in a settlement to avoid an even more burdensome sentence for defaming the Dominion company, precisely due to repeated false stories about electoral fraud. That expert claimed that at least 20% of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. One of Trump's favorite topics, as he has been claiming for years that mail-in voting is rigged in favor of his opponents. And he amplifies the message now, just as ballots begin to be distributed in various states.
In several states, officials overseeing the process have been subjected to four years of harassment, threats, and even attacks by those who believe in the conspiracy theory. Adrian Fontes, Secretary of State of Arizona and in charge of the recounts in 2020 in the famous Maricopa County, has described this attitude as "tyrannical" in an interview on CNN. "It is concerning especially for those risking their integrity. There are observers and officials from many parties. These comments from Trump are not political, they are tyrannical. I myself lost in my election in 2020 and we did not accuse anyone of cheating and betrayals.
The Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump's campaign announced in April that they would deploy 100,000 volunteers to oversee the vote count in contested states during the elections and report irregularities, as well as lawyers to provide rapid response services if there are issues in the vote count. With a 24-hour hotline to coordinate efforts.
They have an army ready to challenge results in every county where they lose, request recounts, or perhaps even, as happened in 2020, pressure officials not to declare Harris as the winner. In the U.S. electoral system, the total votes do not matter, but the victory in each state, which based on its population has a number of electoral delegates, in a college of 538 members, who technically elect the president.
In Georgia, for example, the State Electoral Board has five members, three of them Republicans who are overseeing a reform of the rules that, according to experts (and the other two members of the Board, an independent and a Democrat), could jeopardize the certification of the elections, particularly if Vice President Kamala Harris wins there. Historically, the person in charge of the process was the Secretary of State, but as in 2020 he did not yield to Trump and his supporters' pressure, he was removed.