Thank you for your question which reminds us that this election, like this live broadcast, will probably not end the day after November 5.
As you recall, Donald Trump never acknowledged his defeat in 2020 against Joe Biden, accusing the Democrats of having falsified the election without any proof. He never committed to recognizing the results of the next one, implying that they would be rigged if he did not win. This line has been carried, for several months, at all levels of his campaign, from his running mate, J.D. Vance, to senior officials like Chris LaCivita, who said in July: “It doesn’t end on Election Day, it ends on Inauguration Day.” »
In other words, the November 5 vote can be contested until January 20, 2025, the official day of the inauguration of the or 47e president of the United States. This is a hypothesis that many observers are betting on for several reasons. First, what journalist Anna Bower calls “the politicization of the certification process at the local level” since 2020. Since voting in the United States is very decentralized, results can be contested at the county level, then the state level, which can slow down the certification of results “and cause post-election chaos, disinformation and potentially political violence”she fears.
Secondly, it is a strategy clearly supported by the Republican side. Beyond Donald Trump’s rhetoric, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is already involved in more than a hundred lawsuits across the country to challenge the conduct of the vote. It also launched a program to train and deploy thousands of observers to polling stations to, according to a statement, “beat the Democrats at their own game” and ensure “that the Democratic Party’s cheating doesn’t work this time”.
Will this be enough to derail the electoral process? Derek Muller, specialist in electoral law at the University of Notre Dame, explains to Monde what “the counting and certification process is much more robust” compared to 2020, in particular with a federal law which gives more power to the judiciary to demand results at each polling station. “It is possible that some officials will try to delay the process, but it is unlikely that they will succeed in doing so for long”he predicts.
The risk of political violence cannot be ruled out, even if it does not reach the extreme headlong rush that was the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Let us not forget that a majority of Republican voters still think, according to many polls, that the election was stolen from Donald Trump in 2020. This will depend, in large part, on the attitude of Donald Trump himself.
The federal prosecutor who is investigating the case against him for attempts to illegally reverse the results of the 2020 election made the indictment public a few days ago. He accuses the then president of having “prepared the ground” to a rejection of the electoral results before the end of the vote, telling advisers that in the event of an advance at the start of the counting of votes, it would be “would declare the winner before the ballots are counted and a winner has been announced”. A little further on, he cites the testimony of an advisor who heard Donald Trump say to those close to him: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election, you have to fight like a dog. »
This is a major theme of this end of the campaign to which we will return at the end of the week with an article from our correspondent in the United States. Stay tuned.
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