Fraud in the US election only exists in three places: in the heads of Trump, his closest allies and Bolsonarists
As much as the subject of the American elections has been a topic for some time now (our third edition was dedicated to the American election), this week Brazilians really turned their eyes to their northern neighbour.
It does not come as a surprise – ignoring the Brazilian “foreign idolatry complex” – since it is of great interest to the citizens of Brazil to know who will occupy the White House for the next four years or, rather, if Trump will keep his seat in Washington. This is due to the fact that, as could be observed in almost two years of the Bolsonaro government, there is an alignment not only automatic but unconditional with the current American president – and not with the US as many say.
When, in the USA, a military intervention in Venezuela was discussed, the Brazilian president began to cogitate on a Brazilian participation creating tensions in the subcontinent – at the time, it was reported that the military had stopped the Brazilian president’s quixotic crusade. At the time of the pandemic, chloroquine was an issue in the US and this translated into another anti-science crusade in Brazil – our country having been used as a dumping ground for tons of the product that the US realised would serve no purpose (not even Trump used the medicine when he contracted the disease).
Thus, it is not surprising that Brazilians do want to know who will win the American election, since this will have direct consequences on our domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, Biden has already signalled that he will be severe with Brazil in relation to its environmental mistreatment (of the Amazon above all). Bolsonaro’s policy of “passing the buck” cannot continue if Brasília does not want to receive real threats of sanctions. At international level, Brazil, which is already proud, in the words of its Chancellor, to be an international pariah, will no longer have the strength of the USA and will have to collaborate only with other countries governed by mandataries who follow the Brazilian right-wing doctrine, namely Poland and Hungary.
If Trump manages to get re-elected, the situation remains more or less the same, with a tendency to get stronger, since winning the election means the American population’s endorsement of an international policy of confrontation, threatening bilateralism and conspiracies. Brazil would have more strength to continue its fight against the international windmill.
Therefore, the results of the American elections became the subject in both Brazilian traditional and social media. But, as it couldn’t be otherwise, when you talk about a subject you don’t know, people also tend to expose erroneous opinions. The allegation of fraud is one of them.
The fraud exposed by social media
We have dedicated a good part of our third issue to explaining a part of the American electoral system – which is quite complex. But something that should be brought up here is the fact that in the US, the presidential election (and also for Congress and other issues concerning only the state in question) is in charge of the state itself. This means that on 3rd November, 50 independent elections were taking place in the USA.
And why independent? Because each state has its own rules for the election (it can be by mail, marked ballot, write-in ballot, mark-and-write ballot, electronic ballot box, etc.) and for the counting of votes (only votes up to the day of the election are valid, votes that arrive by mail up to six days after the election can be valid, and so on). In the case of counting, which is being called into question by the president and social media, there is a direct effect of this autonomy of each of the 50 federal entities in the US.
At first, it is important to stress that all the results being reported in the media (TV, newspaper, social networks) are not official. Unlike what we are used to in Brazil, of receiving electoral data directly from the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) – in an official manner – in the US the official election data is only released in early December (more or less a month after the face-to-face election). Until then, what we see are the data released by the press that collects these data in loco in the American counties (something like the Brazilian municipalities). What is the practical consequence of this? That the data, firstly, are not real, but a forecast. And secondly, that the media that do not obtain data from the same database will present divergent results.
The most famous consortium for doing this collection is the Associated Press (AP) which presents in its online portal the process of releasing the electoral data (“inspectors” of the press collect the data in the counties, pass them on to the AP offices by phone, they check these data with other inspectors and enter them into the system – which also prevents them from adding data that is too discrepant, creating “stops” in the counting back and forth). Companies like Google have their data coming from AP. That means, for example, that on November 5 at 10am, it is acknowledged by the AP that Biden has secured the state of Arizona. The New York Times and CNN, on the other hand, do not count Arizona delegates for the Democrat, indicating that the election in the state has not yet been settled.
What’s more, the total numbers are different. While The Gardian at 10am on 5 November pointed out that Donald Trump had garnered 68,650,312 votes, the New York Times reported that the Republican held 68,362,959 (287,000 votes “fewer”). And it is not a question of “ideological alignment”, even because, in the case of Arizona, while CNN (which many point out as pro-Biden) does not yet accept that the Democrat has secured the state, Fox News (which shows itself as pro-Trump) already gives the state as a win for Biden.
An image that is being circulated on Twitter – and republished by many Bolsonaro supporters – is that in the state of Michigan, the counting would have been “stopped” and then Biden would have won just over 138,000 votes while Trump had won none:
First of all, it is very important to remember that these results are not official. That said, there may be several answers for this “strange” increase in Biden’s (and only Biden’s) numbers. The possibilities range from an error in the transmission of information from the press “inspector” on the spot, mistyping of data in the system, or even because votes for the Democrat only were actually counted at that moment – it should be remembered that the counting is done with proper methods by each state and each county, they didn’t necessarily observe 138 thousand votes and all of them were for the Democrat, but maybe they released this data at once (it should be remembered that in many states the vote is only on paper).
Another image that is released is that, in the graphs of the evolution of the percentage of votes, Biden’s numbers rise vertically and not diagonally (showing how he would be receiving thousands of votes at once, while Trump does not show this increase).
The New York Times, as shown in the image above, presents the evolution of the percentage of votes in the state of Michigan and several moments of abrupt rise and fall (or “vertical”) appear for both Biden and Trump. In those moments, there is a much larger increase for one candidate than for the other. Mainly because this data is not official, one cannot speak of fraud using these graphs that are the sole responsibility of the press – and the bodies that publish them.
Some have even gone on social media to talk that, in the states where Trump won the vote, this sharp rise in the vertical also happened:
Trump’s fraud
Supporters of the current US president are left to take Trump at his word when he constantly claims that there would be, is (and, in the near future, has been) fraud in the 2020 election. In the early hours of 4 November, Trump reaffirmed that there was fraud in the election, declared an unsubstantiated victory in the polls and even threatened to go to the Supreme Court to ensure that he stayed in office and that the counting of votes stopped.
Going to court to stop the vote count, in Brazil and in almost every corner of the world, would be fraud itself, but in the US it would be preventing fraud – at least in the ideological discourse of the current US president and his supporters. Trump claims it to be fraud, but gives no evidence that it would be. While he required the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop the count – when he still held the lead – the same is not true for Arizona – where he would have mathematical chances of winning. In other words, fraud occurs only where Trump could lose, but not where he could win.
Many say it is evidence of fraud that Trump’s campaign will ask for a recount of the votes in Wisconsin. In this state, Biden won by a difference of about 20,000 votes (less than one per cent of the total). In 2016, Trump won in Wisconsin, against Hillary Clinton, also with less than one per cent of the total vote – at the time, there was also talk of a recount and Trump responded by claiming that that would be a “coup” by Democrats and the Green party (also running that year). This year, apparently, there is no scam at all in asking for a recount.
More so, he will only ask for a recount because the margin allows him to do so – according to the state constitution. And how so? In states where Biden’s margin has passed the 1%, Trump can’t keep up his talk of fraud – since there is no proof – so where the Democrat can pass the Republican but hasn’t yet, the current president requires the courts to stop the count and for the current result to stand – i.e. still missing votes that could make him lose the state, Trump wants to stop the game in the middle while he’s winning.
At the time of writing this article, Pennsylvania and Georgia seem to point to a Biden flip-flop, also by less than 1%. Trump’s campaign is trying, unsuccessfully, to immediately suspend the counting of votes to maintain its lead. The truth is that the more the chances of the current occupant of the White House having to worry about the moving truck, the more he claims fraud is taking place and the more lawsuits are drafted to stop American democracy.
So far, the only thing that can be stated with certainty is that the so-called American democracy (which is indirect, it must be remembered) has equaled Latin American countries where not only are the results questioned, but the electoral process itself is called into question – something that is unprecedented in American history. This fracture will certainly leave marks regardless of who actually wins the election.
The pot calling the kettle black
Trump’s accusations of fraud in US elections get more interesting when the president himself (or his party) has acted to circumvent the system – or, with a better term, rig it.
On voting by post, which has existed since the time of the American Civil War (1861-1865), the president has constantly spoken of this century-old method being a fraudulent means. Voting in the USA is not compulsory, which means that candidates have to convince voters not only to vote for them, but actually to vote! In a pandemic year, the option of voting by mail – with as little social contact as possible – becomes a much more viable option for millions of citizens – which in turn also increases voter turnout, as they do not have to go out on election day, but vote in advance.
The Democratic candidate, who has railed against the current president’s denialist stance on the virus, encouraged his voters to vote by mail to avoid crowds. Thus, mail-in votes are expected to be mostly for Biden. Trump’s response shows the fraudulent side that he so claims the other side produces.
This year, the US Postal Service (USPS), the American postal system, underwent changes that would make this mode of early voting more difficult. The new administrator of the system (called “Postmaster General”), Louis DeJoy, is a major funder of campaigns of the Republican party – and of Trump. He was appointed by a US government agency, which was another reason to understand that the current administration acted to interfere in the postal system.
A governor’s request to produce the documents that appointed DeJoy to the post, the federal agency refused to produce them, saying they were “confidential”. The new postmaster made changes to the system. One of these was that postal trucks would leave branches at the set time, even if the day’s postage had not yet been loaded – so parcels, letters and ballots could be left behind. Later, the USPS organisation would claim that these memos effecting these changes “were not official” – but stated that the post office was “committed to delivering election mail on time”. After that, another memo would state that the states’ delivery times (to receive the votes), would not be compatible with the postal system’s deadlines – meaning that votes would likely not arrive in time to be counted.
In addition, the California Republican party has installed unauthorised vote postage boxes in the state in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange and Fresno. Some states’ laws allow for another person to deliver someone else’s vote and so those boxes could just be the Republican party delivering other people’s votes. Even when the state government ordered the party to remove these unauthorised boxes, the party refused and said it would continue with them. There is no way of knowing what would happen to the votes that were deposited in these ballot boxes, since it is the Republican party that would control them.
In addition, President Trump himself stated that since there would be fraud in the mail-in ballot, his supporters should vote twice. “If you have a mail-in ballot [absentee ballot], or what I call a requested ballot, send it in. But I would check it anyway. I would follow it up and go vote [in person]. Everybody here wants to vote,” the president said in Wilmington, North Carolina. In Trump’s idea, if vote-by-mail actually worked, the balloters would see that the person would have already voted and not count the vote by mail. According to the executive director of the North Carolina Board of Elections, Karen Brinson Bell, both trying to vote twice and soliciting someone to do so is a crime under state law.
Trying to stop the counting of votes for fear that the opponent will flip is just another attempt by the president to rig the election – when he claims others will.
The outcome of the US elections will only be actually referendum in December when delegates from each state will gather to vote for the president and vice-president – generating a “Certificate of Vote” that will only be checked by Congress in early January. In this process, there may also be further discussions with the risk of so-called “rogue delegates”. But until then, it is certain that Trump will try everything to stay in power – as he himself has already threatened. So to the question “why talk about fraud?” one can answer, “because talking about fraud now is just political propaganda”.
If you want to know more about the American electoral system and the last elections, read the third issue of DPolitik dedicated to the American election by clicking here!
