Threats as Trump attack on US election escalates
President Donald Trump’s false accusations that voter fraud denied him re-election are causing escalating confrontations in swing states across the United States, leading to threats of violence against officials in both parties and subverting even the most routine steps in the electoral process.
In Arizona yesterday, the Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, issued a statement lamenting the “consistent and systematic undermining of trust” in the elections and called on Republican officials to stop “perpetuating misinformation”.
She described threats against her and her family after Joe Biden’s victory in her state.
In Georgia, where Biden holds a narrow lead that is expected to stand through a recount, Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has said he, too, received menacing messages. He also said he felt pressured by Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to search for ways to disqualify votes.
In Pennsylvania, statehouse Republicans yesterday advanced a proposal to audit the state’s election results that cited “a litany of inconsistencies” — a move Democrats described as obstructionist and unnecessary given Trump’s failure to present any evidence in court of widespread fraud or other problems.
Republicans in Wisconsin filed new lawsuits in the state’s two biggest counties, seeking a recount.
Nowhere was the chaos more evident than in Michigan on Wednesday, when two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially refused to certify election results, pointing to minor recording discrepancies.
It was a stunningly partisan move that would have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters from a predominantly black city.
“You could see the racism in the behaviour last night,” said Mike Duggan, the Democratic mayor of Detroit. In courtrooms, statehouses and elections board meetings across the country, Trump is increasingly seeking to force the voting system to bend to his false vision of the election, while using the weight of the executive office to pressure lower-level election workers. The effort has been joined by surrogates like Graham, who has made false claims about vote processing in Nevada; sent unfounded accusations about mail ballots in Pennsylvania to the Justice Department; and levelled unsubstantiated accusations about supposedly fraudulent votes for Biden.
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, have made blanket attacks against cities with large black populations like Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia, painting those places in evidence-free tirades as too corrupt to be trusted to hold honest elections.
The extraordinary assault on the voting system by Trump and his allies has taken on added intensity as the deadlines for certifying results in several states approach. Once certified, final tallies will further forestall Trump’s attempt to overturn his loss.
His strategy appears to centre on disrupting the process through which states finalise their vote counts and submit their delegate slates to the Electoral College. Republicans’ attempts to follow his lead in Wayne County failed in the face of Detroit residents who were outraged by the open attempt to disenfranchise them.
A public comment session led to uproar over the fact two white officials were threatening the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of black voters.
The two Democratic members of the Wayne County canvassing board, Jonathan Kinloch and Allen Wilson, reacted with similar shock and anger at the refusal to certify the votes.
After the two Republican members reversed course and voted to certify, the process moved to the Board of State Canvassers, where the results are to be finalised by November 23.
Dana Nessel, the Democratic attorney general of Michigan, said she had kept a wary eye on the Wayne County proceedings, and was particularly worried about potential litigation stemming from a canvass fight.
“I keep hoping we’ll see a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
“But it was obvious that these are plans that have been in place for a long time and it’s just a matter of how far the Republicans will take this.”