A country, which is eager to move on from an election that never ends, carried out its unique Electoral College election as dictated by the US Constitution this December 14. It was a grand process argued by James Madison in the Federalist Papers, America’s Bible of Democracy, 232 years ago.
It was the casting of votes in 51 different cities across America into ballot boxes like the one designed and made by Benjamin Franklin for the votes from the state of Pennsylvania for what was to be an act to enshrine and seal the will of the American people in deciding its leader, the decorum added to the electoral process. It was also until this year a process that went on barely noticed, meriting little more than a small squib in the news.
But this year, the process was televised live locally and globally, broadcasting every Electoral College vote cast from 50 state capitals plus the District of Columbia to elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, a native of Pennsylvania and resident of Delaware, and Kamala Devi Harris, a native of California of Indian ancestry and heritage, as President and Vice-president of the United States.
It was notable because this year, America’s current president, a Donald J Trump, is actively orchestrating the very opposite of American democracy in manners the country’s worst enemies have only dreamed of. That is not hyperbole. It is the American reality.
But even as Biden said in a speech to the nation after the vote that “democracy beats deep in the hearts of Americans,” Trump and a core of operatives and Republicans are continuing an unprecedented and damaging effort to try to dismantle the careful (if fragile, as Trump has successfully demonstrated) architecture of American democracy.
Electoral College votes had to be carried out in undisclosed locations, using secret entrances, under heavily armed state police security and threats of violence stoked by the very President of the United States.
The Michigan state capitol, the place where the electors are supposed to meet, was shut down for security purposes following threats of kidnapping and executing its governor and new threats against its slate of electors.
This after Trump has tried every possible thing and several impossible avenues to try to invalidate the results of an election that he lost but, inexplicably claims he won despite a deficit of 74 Electoral College votes and a loss by more than 7.4 million in the popular vote.
Trump has challenged the election results in some 56 legal cases, including appeals to the Supreme Court which Trump hinted without many disguises that he expected ruled in his favour due to his having appointed three of the justices during his term. The courts have denied, dismissed, settled or seen withdrawn all but one.
But that was not all. Trump attempted to arm-twist Republican governors and secretaries of state of battleground states into not certifying Biden’s victory on the count of alleged “massive fraud” for which he failed to present anything but angry accusations from the president and his associates. A Trump-appointed judge ruled that the court itself had allowed Trump to make every case, and declared that he had “lost on the merits.”
Trump sought to overturn results in states where he lost by over 100,000 votes in brazen but unsuccessful attempts to throw out millions of votes by claiming (without ever showing any evidence that was not readily dismissed out of court) that they were cast illegally. The courts did not buy it. The state legislators did not fall for it.
Losing that, Trump tried to convince state legislators in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states to not certify the results of their state elections, inviting them to the White House for an in-person persuasion, a public overture that yielded no results. There is a reason for doing this, without certified electors, the process would be taken into a vote in the House of Representatives when it meets on January 6 for the official tallying of the votes, where America’s antiquated system gives each delegation one vote if the election is thrown to the House of Representatives should there be a dispute about the votes cast December 14. (Republicans hold a majority of delegations, thus, supposedly they would blindly choose Trump over the will of the electorate).
Trump then tried to get the Republican governor and secretary of state of Georgia to refuse to certify the state’s election. When they refused to violate the law, Trump unleashed a string of vile tweets, insults, and put-downs, calling Governor Brian Kemp, a staunch Trump ally, a “clown” and a “fool,” who is “finished.”
The secretary of state of Texas, a man federally indicted on first-degree felony state securities fraud, turned to support the effort of the pardon-happy Trump by filing what legal experts deemed a frivolous lawsuit on behalf of Texas seeking to throw out millions of votes in the states that gave Biden the margin of victory — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
The states responded by calling the lawsuit a “cacophony of bogus claims” devoid of factual or legal grounds.
Nevertheless, Trump, with his 85 million Twitter followers and 74 million election votes, was able to convince 18 other states’ attorneys-general to join in on the lawsuit, to which he added himself, as President of the United States, as a plaintiff for good measure, openly musing as to the victory he expected in from the court and its justices indebted to him for their lifetime appointment. One-hundred-and-twenty-six elected Republicans signed on to the obviously futile effort.
When the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, in effect dismissing it, Trump tweeted insults towards the Court, “No Wisdom, No Courage." For some time, Trump had been alluding to the Supreme Court as “his” court, much as he has referred to the U.S. military as “my military” and U.S. generals as “my generals.”
But his appointees to the high court refused to undermine the integrity of the elections and to create more confusion about the election results, unanimously refusing to give his claims any credence.
Then the campaign began to prevent certification of state votes by state legislatures by the Safe Harbor day of December 8, a date by which recounts, audits, challenges, and lawsuits aimed to stop certification were to end by law. When that deadline passed with all states certifying their votes, Trump ignored it and continued an unparalleled effort to force Republicans to vote as “faithless electors,” voting for him instead of Biden.
In the end, not one elector changed a vote, and the final vote was Biden 306 to Trump’s 232, affirming Biden’s win. He was less successful than his opponents 4 years ago when seven electors, including two Republicans, cast “faithless” votes for other people turning an election night result of 306 to 232 in his favour (exactly the same margin by which Biden won in this year’s election) into an electoral total of Trump 304 to 227 for Hillary Clinton.
But Trump and the Republicans were not done.
Because the official tally of the votes in Congress on January 6 leaves open a door in case of competing sets of electors (amounting to enough questioned electoral votes to affect the election), Trump-supporting Republicans are now skirting the state legislatures and naming their own sets of electors, hoping for an election in the House of Representatives to supplant the purportedly tainted elections.
In the Biden-won states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, Republicans claiming to be electors cast their own votes for Trump, setting up a set of conflicting electors in Congress on January 6.
The Arizona Republic reported that a group “that claimed to represent the ‘sovereign citizens of the Great State of Arizona’ submitted signed papers casting votes for what they want: a second term for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence,” in their effort to stop what they see is the steal of the election by Biden, as Trump has been baselessly claiming since Biden was declared a victor in November.
The group sent purported notarized documents “certifying the vote” and sent it to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. “We seated before the legislators here. We already turned it in. We beat them to the game,” told the filer to the Arizona Republic, notwithstanding the fact that Biden legally won the state and that its legislature has certified its votes for Biden.
Despite the common wisdom that says they have no chance of overturning the election in January, expect a battle in the House of Representatives on January 6, attempting to force a vote by state delegation to select the president.
With Nancy Pelosi in charge as Speaker of the House, the effort is unlikely to get anywhere procedurally but will serve to stoke the feelings that the election was unfairly stolen and to incite those prone to violence. Trump does nothing to stop this and his tweets continue to normalize the possibility of violence.
“The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one. It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!” said a recent Trump tweet.
To be sure, there is plenty of enabling of all of this going on by elected Republicans, including Senate Majority Mitch McConnel, who coyly refuses to accept that the process is over and that Biden-Harris have won the election.
He is not alone. Congressional Republicans last week rejected a resolution accepting the Biden-Harris as the winner of the election. Even after the electoral college vote, only about 30 Republicans are publically acknowledging the Biden-Harris victory.
Even beyond a loss on January 6 in Congress, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has already stated that the only date that matters is January 20, at noon. The time when the presidential term ends and another begins. The implication is that Trump and Company will not stop their attempt to overthrow the election results until the last minute.
Of course, the process is paying off handsomely for Trump. Requests for monetary donations from enraged supporters to “fight the illegal theft of the election” have tallied up well over $220 million. Seventy per cent of which can be used by Trump himself as he wishes, according to the cleverly worded small print that explains the use of proceeds. The money, it is feared, could be used to foment insurrection or to set up a shadow government without acknowledging defeat. In the alternative, as language permits, for Trump’s personal use.
There is no other way to describe their actions as the opposite of democracy. The Trump language that draws out feelings of anger among his supporters is drawing pity for America, a nation held hostage, subject to all the suffering Trump is willing to inflict as he refuses to leave the office.
With millions of people on both sides in the divided nation, and Trump willing to use the power of his 74 million votes without end, the contrast of ideas, however, is on a pathos of parallel tracks that are strongly opposites of each other — democracy and the opposite of democracy, on the emotions produced by tragedy.
The obituary of this election is premature, but that means an American tragedy is in the making.
