Election securityHow to Change an Election
A 3 August report from the Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan group of political, government, and academic experts that ran election crisis-planning exercises to game out what might happen between now and Inauguration Day, predicts “lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides.” With both sides wary of tampering, Daniel Carpenter, a Harvard government professor, tries to game the game on what tactics could follow a close result.
In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that the election would be rigged against him, though the charge fell away when he went on to win. Two and a half months before that election, Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend and adviser who was later convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation, penned an op-ed explaining how to “strip and flip” votes in electronic machines.
In 2020, both Trump and his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, suggest that the other may try to “steal” the election. Biden predicted Trump would seek to delay it, an idea that Trump floated several weeks later on Twitter, and try to suppress mail-in voting by undercutting the U.S. Postal Service and claiming that practice enables voter fraud. Trump and top administration officials, including Attorney General William Barr, have repeated that claim often, with Trump refusing to commit to accept the results of the election if he lost a close race, and Barr saying he would leave office on 20 January 2021, provided the election results are “clear.”
Two weeks ago, attorneys general from twenty states, including Massachusetts, sued the Trump administration over staffing and service changes that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had ordered. DeJoy said, in a testimony before Congress a few days ago, he will suspend service cutbacks until after the election to avoid the appearance that the moves could be directed against mail-in voting.
With partisan tensions, a polarized electorate, and the COVID-19 pandemic, this election is shaping up as tumultuous even if no malfeasance occurs. A 3 August report from the Transition Integrity Project, a bipartisan group of political, government, and academic experts that ran election crisis-planning exercises to game out what might happen between now and Inauguration Day, predicts “lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides.” The report expects Trump “will very likely use” his presidential powers to aid his campaign and says “there is a chance” Trump “will attempt to convince legislatures and/or governors to take actions — including illegal actions — to defy the popular vote.”
