Republicans sowing doubt to prepare for protest

Photo: John Moore Getty Images via Agence France-Presse Voters cast their ballots on the first day of early voting in Stamford, Conn., on Oct. 21, 2024.

Fabien Deglise

Published at 0:00 Analysis

• United States

The charge by Republicans who, with Donald Trump’s blessing, have been seeking for weeks to change Georgia’s election rules, just days before the presidential election in November, has been stopped in its tracks by the state Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the highest court upheld a lower court ruling that last week called “illegal, unconstitutional and void” the changes to election rules enacted in August and September by the Republican majority on the state Board of Elections.

The small group sought, among other things, to force a hand count of ballots by three workers at the close of polls and to tighten the process for certifying the results, at the risk of slow down.

The measures, according to this group, were aimed at strengthening the security of the vote and making it easier to contest the results, in a climate of distrust towards the American electoral framework fueled, without proof of fraud or malfunction of the system, by Donald Trump since 2020 to justify his defeat.

But for several senior election officials in Georgia, as well as for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, these last-minute changes would above all sow confusion in the upcoming procedures and ultimately fuel chaos, in a key state where the results of the vote are expected to be tight between Kamala Harris and the populist.

Inducing doubt to prepare the ground for contestation: the strategy is not new. And it seems to have been redeployed, more massively than fraud, by the Republicans in several states where the results of the vote, like in Georgia, will be decisive on November 5.

Several dozen lawsuits have been filed since the beginning of the year by the Republican Party or political groups affiliated with it, in all the key states, including Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, to change the way in which the vote will be cast or will be counted in a few weeks.

These legal actions may target the voter registry, which Donald Trump's supporters are seeking to purge of several thousand names, particularly within communities or groups, such as students, who traditionally vote more favorably towards Democrats.

In North Carolina, the validity of the digital IDs of 40,000 students and employees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which had previously been accepted by election authorities, was suddenly rejected by a court, just two weeks before early voting began.

In Georgia, this pressure on the voter registry last August forced another 40,000 voters to go through the registration process again in order to regain their right to vote in November. In 2020, the state awarded Joe Biden a victory by a margin of just 11,779 votes.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

Accusations destroyed by the facts

Ironically, a recently released audit of the state’s Republican governor’s voter registration found that 20 people lacked sufficient proof of U.S. citizenship out of 8.2 million registered voters. Of those, nine had cast a ballot “in recent years,” the report said. A result that nullifies the former president’s allegations, repeated with assurance for four years, that “massive electoral fraud” cost him Georgia in 2020 and his seat in the White House.

This parallel reality has, however, prompted local authorities in Arizona to change their laws in 2022 to force a hand count of ballots — known to be less accurate than that carried out by voting machines — or to prevent the counting of ballots deposited in advance in secure drop boxes before the polls close on November 5.

This framework, local election officials have warned in recent days, risks delaying the unveiling of results by 10 to 13 days after Election Day, thus creating a space of uncertainty and waiting in which anticipatory calls for victory as well as the usual conspiracy theories about vote manipulation can take hold.

This year, no fewer than 230 Republican candidates for a seat in Congress or for elected office in several states have questioned the integrity of the current electoral process, according to a survey conducted by the Washington Post. The candidate for senator from Arizona in Washington, Kari Lake, a Trump supporter with a radical stance praised by the former president, comes first among these candidates who have most propagated online comments evoking, without proof, “manipulation” of the current election.

Recall that in 2020, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency declared the last presidential election “the most secure in American history,” stating that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or otherwise compromised [the election].”

An analysis conducted by the Associated Press over several months after that presidential election found fewer than 475 cases of potential voter fraud in six key states, five of which Joe Biden swung to the Democratic camp in 2020. Not enough to call those gains into question.

230 That’s the number of Republican candidates for a seat in Congress or an elected office in several states who have questioned the integrity of the current electoral process, according to a survey conducted by the Washington Post.

A fragile climate

“Attempts to change electoral rules in recent months have aimed to gain advantages in the run-up to the vote, but above all to create conditions that will allow the results to be contested if they are close,” summarized Mike Albertus, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, in an interview this week. And at this point, it is appropriate to oppose any last-minute change in the rules, in order to maintain order in the system, both before the election and on Election Day.”

A poll conducted last week by Suffolk University on behalf of USA Today found that 34 percent of Republicans, compared to 4 percent of Democrats, already have no confidence in the upcoming results. They say the votes will not be “accurately counted and reported.” A quarter of those Republicans say they will not accept the outcome if their candidate loses. Seven percent of Democrats say the same.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump added fuel to the conspiracy fire from North Carolina by expressing surprise that Kamala Harris was taking two days off from the campaign this week—a false claim, as the Democrat has had multiple public events scheduled each day. “She knows something we don’t know,” he claimed. “I think she knows a result we don’t know.” The statement followed closely on the heels of his running mate, J.D. Vance, who last week reiterated from Pennsylvania that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election.