It’s democracy at its best - US ambassador

He says electoral process is transparent, free and fair

Ambassador of the United States of America to Botswana Graig Cloud says what is currently happening in his country concerning elections and the final outcome of election is a sign of a matured democracy at its best.

He spoke to Botswana Guardian in a wide ranging interview.

“I think what is happening in the US is democracy at its best. Put the political rhetoric aside, I think what you are seeing now is not actually surprising at all.

“That it took long to have a decision is because of the huge number of mail in and early voters. I think it will be unrealistic to expect us to have resolved it on Election Day just because of all the rules and all the states that do not start counting until the election is over”.

He said what is happening, is not unusual and gave the example of President George W. Bush who had not been declared a winner until December 12 because that decision was rendered by the Supreme Court.

“I read that in the election of 1796 it took three months to select the winner. The way that the election is being counted and votes tallied is about democracy at its best because it is transparent, free and fair, and candidates do not declare themselves the winner.

“It is state by state that declares the winner and whoever has the most electoral votes and that will not happen until every single vote is counted”.

Cloud thinks that the Black Lives Matter ( BLM) Movement certainly galvanised the people of colour in the United States.

He believes many people who otherwise would not have voted this year did so because after all, people vote for the issues that matter to them.

“Whether your biggest issue, is safety for your children and you are a black mother, or if your single biggest issue is the economy because you are business person, or your biggest issue is health care, you vote for the things that matter to you.

“So I am sure the Black Lives Matter galvanised many people who would otherwise not have voted”.

On lessons learnt Cloud says the COVID- 19 pandemic changed everything all over the world and building up to the elections many states decided that they wanted to make sure that as many people as possible have the ability to vote.

They greatly expanded the ability to vote early, to reduce crowding on the actual day of the elections and also to increase the ability to do a ballot so that you did not have to go to the polls.

He says that in 2016 there were 46 million early ballots, while this year it is more than 100 million early voters. “That is why you see this delay because there is a lot more counting going on.

“I think lessons learnt for future elections are that every state is going to address its individual rules because each state in the US has got its voting rules, now some states like Ohio and Texas opened mail ballots and were ready early, but other states such as Arizona Pennsylvania, Georgia, Carolina, all of those, they wait until actually the election day before they can open the ballots, so their ballots counting does not even start until the ballot closes on elections day.

“And many times they do not start counting votes until the morning after. This somehow actually allows the voting to continue up to three days after the elections thus allowing people who did the mail voting to get to the post office to get to the polling station.

“As far as the lessons learnt, I think it is for individual states to look at the past and then adjust their rules to maybe make them more streamlined.

“Some states may change their rules to allow counting of mail votes to start early or something or may decide to increase the number of counters so that they can do more quickly - you take the lessons learnt do prepare for next elections”.

Asked what the policy position of both Democrats and Republicans with respect to relations with Africa is, Cloud said in the last couple of administrations, probably more significantly with the Trump administration, there has been emphasis on increasing business with Africa.

“The Trump administration has created the Prosper Africa Initiative, with the goal of expanding trade between Africa and the United States and I believe the Biden administration will probably continue with that because we believe that the best way to lift the countries out of dependency is to improve their economy through business, trade, entrepreneurship, business development and that is why we have made a lot of efforts in trying to create trade between the US and all the countries in Africa in general”.

He said it is interesting that this election has not focused on foreign policy nearly as much as previous elections because there were so many domestic issues ongoing, such as COVID- 19 and universal health care and the affordable care Act. He said when the Trump administration stopped funding WHO they were going to redirect the funding to others who are doing the work in the same space.

“I think that speaking as far as the President Trump believes, it really has not affected our work in Botswana at all. But, I know that there are other places where there is a more robust engagement between US and WHO, but the funding has shifted to other organisations whether NGOs that are doing vaccine work or smoking campaigns”.