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Washington (AFP)
The 2000 US presidential election hinged on a few votes in Florida and was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.
The 2020 White House contest gave birth to the “Big Lie” and saw supporters of the losing candidate storm the United States Capitol.
Wait and see what 2024 has in store for you.
Donald Trump, the first president in U.S. history to refuse to accept an election result, is flirting with another White House candidate in what could be a watershed moment for American democracy.
Robert Kagan, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, sounded the alarm bells in political circles last week with a chilling op-ed on the doomsday scenario in the Washington Post.
“The United States is heading into its biggest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War,†Kagan wrote.
The neoconservative scholar warned of “a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a collapse of federal authority and the division of the country into red and blue enclaves in war”.
Polls suggest a majority of Americans share at least some of Kagan’s concerns: 56% of those polled in a recent CNN-SSRS survey said American democracy was under attack.
Thirty-seven percent said it was “testedâ€. Only six percent said he was not in danger.
Trump’s relentless and baseless claims that the November 2020 presidential vote was “stolen” by Democrat Joe Biden have seeped into political blood.
Seventy-eight percent of Republicans polled by CNN-SSRS said they did not believe Biden had legitimately won the presidency, a figure consistent with findings from other opinion polls.
“This is a new phenomenon in the American elections,” said Edward Foley, professor of constitutional law at Ohio State University.
“There have been brawls over the hanging of chads – like Bush versus Gore in 2000 – and there have been recounts for as long as there have been elections in America,†Foley said.
“But the ‘Big Lie’ is new. It’s out of touch with reality and it’s kind of social pathology.”
– ‘By all necessary means’ –
Richard Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine, said in a recent research paper that the United States finds itself in a time of “democratic peril”, facing an unprecedented danger of “Electoral subversion”.
“The United States is at serious risk that the 2024 presidential election and other future American elections will not be held fairly and that the candidates for the election will not reflect the free choices made by eligible voters under the previously announced electoral rules, â€Hasen said. wrote.
In his opinion piece, Kagan said Trump, 75, and his Republican allies are laying the groundwork to secure a victory in 2024 “by any means necessary.”
Trump, who maintains an iron grip on loyal Republicans and is almost certain to be the party’s presidential candidate if he decides to run, appears to be setting the stage for “Big Lie 2.0,†Foley said.
The strategy involves restrictions such as voter identification laws passed by some Republican-led state legislatures that Democrats say aim to suppress minority voting and, Republicans say, are designed to protect the government. integrity of the ballot.
It also includes replacing Republican state election officials such as Brad Raffensperger, the Georgian Secretary of State who refused to make Trump’s offer in 2020 and “find” 11,780 votes, with candidates who are unconditional supporters.
“Once you have that person in charge, you have someone who has a great influence on how the elections are conducted, how the votes are counted, who declared the winner, how the Electoral College votes are cast. align, â€said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
– ‘Ultimate perversion of democracy’ –
While this would spark outrage from Democrats, Republican-controlled state legislatures could potentially ignore the popular vote in their states if it goes against Trump and appoint their own voters to the Electoral College, the final arbiter. presidential victory, Sabato said.
Republicans are also well positioned to win a majority in 2022 in the currently Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, giving them another potential leverage of power in 2024.
“As ugly as January 6 was with bloodshed and insurgencies, the outcome has never been in doubt,” Foley said, as then-vice president Mike Pence finally said refused to accept Trump’s demands to reject the electoral college lists of several states they lost to. Biden.
“But if members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2025 are predisposed to the ‘Big Lie’ approach and are prepared to repudiate election results just for the sake of political power, that would be the ultimate perversion of democracy,” Foley said. .
© 2021 AFP
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