The Great Fraud E-Book

Paul Pences

• Herausgeber: BookThug
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 33

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

To speak of fraud, irregularities or suspicions in the US presidential elections seems to be something as inadmissible as it is scandalous. It is one of the main democracies in the world, a country often used as an example of respect for institutions and consolidation of the representative democracy system. But are there maneuvers capable of twisting the outcome of an election? When margins are that tight, as was the case in some states, the answer appears to be yes. Which operations were held and

Leseprobe

The Antibodies of the Democratic System

The 2020 US presidential elections were complicated from the outset: a divided country, with right and far right groups supporting President Trump (and in a more or less explicit way, having his approval); uprisings against racial discrimination and the excessive use of police force against the Afro-American population, gathered in the Black Lives Matter movement; all in a global context of the coronavirus pandemic that for months paralyzed much of the economic activity. Many analysts believe that it was precisely Trump’s handling of the pandemic that caused his popularity to decline: he dismissed the severity of the virus, blamed the Chinese government and put the economy before health. Until early 2020, with a booming economy and low unemployment rates, Trump’s reelection seemed expected.

The 2020 elections had a historical record of mail-in ballots, and several states relaxed the voter ID requirements, supposedly to allow the largest number of citizens to vote in a pandemic context. All of this led to numerous fraud claims. For the left, these were unfounded claims that sought, beyond the specific result of the elections, to restrict the vote to a part of the citizenry (mainly immigrants or ethnic minorities who are historically Democratic voters). The cross accusations rekindled the debate about the ways in which elections are conducted, the irregularities in the vote counts, and the complaints and suspicions that have accompanied the elections since their inception, and that with the introduction of electronic voting in the 1990s only got worse.

All over the world, since the fall of the Welfare State, “representative democracy” has been in crisis. Citizen’s confidence in the system of representation, political parties and elections is decreasing. There are still no political systems emerging as potentially viable or desirable, or capable of dethroning representative democracy. However, with a system that shows its flaws again and again, with growing citizens’ distrust, with the new generation’s indifference or disbelief, the political system (aided by the judicial systems and large corporations) stonewalls to defend itself, as has happened in the United States. Did Trump’s fraud claims have any basis? Why did even members of his party and his cabinet turn their backs on him in the last days of his term? Why did so many of his own voters reject the way Trump behaved after the election?

In that context, it seems that Trump had become too uncomfortable a voice not only for the opponents, but for all those who wanted the system as they knew it to continue standing. Donald Trump, the president who had been politically incorrect from the beginning, who had entered the world of politics without a previous career and with excessive arrogance, who was not afraid to put into words what many thought, suddenly became a voice that had to be silenced in order to defend the system as a whole.

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Fraud Claims

Months before the presidential election, Trump had begun to claim that expanding the mail-in ballot could lead to fraud. True to his style, he did not slip subtle comments, but instead claimed it with that crude and uncomfortable voice that characterizes him. Some states implemented the sending of the absentee ballot (a form of suffrage by absence, implemented since the times of the Civil War to allow soldiers to vote, which enabled them to vote by mail or outside of designated places) to all registered voters, and not just those who formally required it. In doing so, they implemented the “universal vote by mail” that some states like Oregon had already implemented. 17 of the 50 states modified their legislation regarding the forms of suffrage for the 2020 elections.