Voters wait to cast ballots in the Wisconsin presidential primary on April 7.
May 4, 2020 by David Silverberg.
This year, election officials—in Southwest Florida and around the nation—will face threats and challenges unlike any that most Americans have experienced in their lifetimes.
At the same time, never has a clean, efficient and fairly conducted election been more important. The 2020 election will be one of America’s most historic, shaping the nation’s future in as fundamental a way as the very first one in 1788. Given the stakes, the results—however they turn out—must be seen and accepted by all parties as legitimate and accurate.
What is more, Americans tend to think of election cycles as a force of nature, like the orbiting of the planets and the rising of the sun, always taking place as scheduled. Before this year, the only postponed primary in American history that this author could find was the New York mayoral primary scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001. This year, 15 states postponed their presidential preference primaries due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
So it’s essential to look ahead to the challenges that election officials and voters may face and how they’ve faced them, where history provides any guide.
This is not a complete list, by any means. There have always been questions about elections and there’s much potential for mischief in the mechanics of counting and recording votes. However, this year some unique threats stand out.
First, there’s the threat that’s particular to Florida…
Storms
Hurricane Michael, 2018
This year Florida will be conducting a critical primary election on Aug. 18. While August is not the depth of Florida’s hurricane season—that comes in September—August, and late August especially, has always been a very active time for hurricanes.
This has been an unusually hot year already, the signs are not good and 12 long-term prognosticators are predicting a highly active hurricane season.
Hurricane Irma struck Southwest Florida in 2017 when there were no elections scheduled. But Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 storm and the strongest ever to hit Florida, hit the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, 2018 just before a general election scheduled for Nov. 6.
That was in the midst of the hotly contested races for Senate between Rick Scott and Bill Nelson and for governor between Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum.
With infrastructure and local polling places destroyed, Panhandle election officials extended early voting days, starting voting on Oct. 22. In badly hit Gulf and Bay counties, officials established “mega-voting sites” that were open 12 hours a day, according to Reuters. Though voters had to travel further than usual, they were still able to cast ballots.
Ordinarily, voting by mail can take the place of in-person voting but in the case of Hurricane Michael mailed ballots were likely lost and absentee voters may not have received mail-in ballots in time.
Fortunately—if that word can be used in such a disaster—Hurricane Michael struck long enough before the election to give officials time to respond and no one promoted the idea of postponing the election. It took place in affected counties at the same time as the rest of the state.
“What a hurricane does to alter the dynamics of politics and campaigning is it reinforces to people that without government, you have nothing in an emergency,” Steve Bousquet, Tallahassee bureau chief for the Tampa Bay Times, told National Public Radio at the time.
“You know, everyone's asking, where's FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration]?” he said. “Everyone’s asking, you know, where first responders are. And they're grateful for the help they're getting from first responders. But everywhere you look, you see the hand of government trying to give people hope.”
It’s worth noting that Hurricane Michael struck very late in the season, on Oct. 10. This year a hurricane could disrupt the primary election in August or the general election in November—and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that two separate hurricanes could strike on or near both election days.
Germs
Healthcare workers in protective gear.
This year is not the first time a United States election will be occurring in the midst of a pandemic. In 1918 a congressional mid-term election took place amidst the Spanish flu pandemic. (For an excellent article on this, and the main source for the account below, see the History Channel’s “How the US Pulled Off Midterm Elections Amid the 1918 Flu Pandemic.”)
The 1918 influenza struck in a first wave in the spring, died down and then roared back ferociously in September and October, killing 195,000 Americans. By Election Day, Nov. 5, the flu was dying down in the eastern part of the country but mounting in the west. Overall turnout was reduced, at about 40 percent.
“Despite the risks involved, there appears to have been little public discussion about simply postponing the election that year,” states the article. “Jason Marisam, a law professor at Hamline University who has studied how the flu pandemic affected the 1918 midterms, argues that there might well have been talk of postponement—if the United States hadn’t been at war at the time. But with their troops fighting overseas, Americans’ spirit of civic pride was running high, and voting was seen as a necessary act of patriotism.”
More recently, Wisconsin chose to hold its primary as scheduled on April 7 of this year despite the Coronavirus pandemic and numerous efforts to postpone the election.
According to Wisconsin’s official tally, turnout for the primary was 34.3 percent, or 1,551,711 votes cast in both the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries.
The Coronavirus had a big impact on absentee or mail-in voting in the state. “…The coronavirus almost certainly contributed to the record number of people who voted absentee,” wrote Nathan Rakich in an analysis on the website FiveThirtyEight.com. “As of Monday morning [April 13], 1,098,489 absentee ballots had been returned, meaning absentees will probably account for about 80 percent of all votes in this election. That’s an unheard-of proportion in Wisconsin, where voting by mail is not very widespread. For example, only 10 percent of Wisconsinites voted absentee in the 2016 presidential primary, and only 27 percent in the 2016 general election.”
But the mail-in and absentee ballots caused controversy in a state unaccustomed to that form of voting and the results could face legal challenges.
“There have been numerous reports of voters not receiving their absentee ballots in time to cast them, and hundreds of ballots have been found never to have been delivered at all; the U.S. Postal Service is currently investigating what happened,” writes Rakich. “Not to mention, some absentee ballots that were mailed back on time may not be allowed to count. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots must be postmarked by April 7 in order to count, but there are already reports of several hundred ballots not postmarked, which means they might not count.”
A final official result of the Wisconsin primary is scheduled for release on May 15.
If the Coronavirus behaves the same way as the Spanish flu, there is a strong likelihood that the United States could see a second intense wave of infections in the autumn, possibly close to the voting period.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on April 28: “I’m almost certain it will come back. The virus is so transmissible and it’s globally spread. …In my mind, it’s inevitable that we will have a return of the virus or maybe it never even went away. When it does, how we handle it will determine our fate. If by that time we have put into place all of the countermeasures that we need to address this we should do reasonably well. If we don’t do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter.”
That means a possible return of quarantines, closures and lockdowns, possibly at an even higher rate and more restrictive than in the spring.
Given that possibility, election offices need to be prepared for massive voting by mail and that means having sufficient forms, envelopes and the means of verifying and authenticating ballots. But it also means finding the volunteers and poll workers willing to make in-person voting available as well.
At the same time, if there are new bans on assemblies, lockdowns and quarantines once general voting begins there will be all kinds of charges and suspicions about manipulation of voters one way or another.
This raises another potential hazard…
Violence
Armed protesters in Michigan, April 30.
On April 30, armed demonstrators protesting the Coronavirus quarantine entered the Michigan state capitol building, where lawmakers were meeting. Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has been a particular target of President Donald Trump’s ire, as expressed in his tweets and in on-camera comments.
No shots were fired in Michigan but while attracting only small numbers of participants, these armed demonstrations are occurring with increasing frequency. Many were organized by conservative groups and they were certainly encouraged by President Donald Trump’s call to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia from the strictures imposed by their Democratic governors.
This advances a trend toward armed protests that began in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 during which one person was killed by a car driven into a crowd by a right-wing extremist. On Jan. 20, 2020, large numbers of gun-rights protestors demonstrated against proposed gun restrictions in the state capital of Richmond. Just prior to the rally, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested three individuals planning to attend, for firearms violations. They called themselves “The Base,” an English translation of the Arabic, “Al Qaeda.”
To date, other than Charlottesville, none of the other armed protests have resulted in violence, loss of life or destruction. However, it is not inconceivable that in a hotly contested and emotional election, armed individuals or terrorists could attempt to intimidate voters or disrupt or interfere in the electoral process. What is more, in this case such protestors could have the encouragement from an aggrieved party, most likely the President of the United States.
This is not unprecedented in American history. In the 1850s pitched battles occurred on the streets of Baltimore, Md., on election days during the heyday of the anti-immigrant Native American Party, more commonly known now as the “Know-Nothings.”
Potential disruption is always a possibility in any election, so security needs to be robust and alert. But with the trend toward armed displays, this year’s polling places will need additional layers of protection and that protection must be strong, overwhelming and fairly applied to all sides.
The Trump factor
WARNING: The following contains worst-case scenarios that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised.
Perhaps the greatest unknown in this year’s election is the president himself. Given his past actions and character he is also the most volatile and dangerous factor in an already combustible brew.
As noted above, Donald Trump has encouraged “liberation” of states whose governors he opposes, has consistently condoned extremism and violence and openly pursues power at all costs regardless of its impact on the American people, the Constitution or the country.
Trump has always been dangerous but this year he’s also defensive and desperate. Like a cornered rat he has no course except to lash out and attack.
Having shown himself unrestrained by law, the Constitution or the norms that have allowed American politics to function without damage to the country, Donald Trump has to be judged capable of a variety of actions that could adversely impact this election—and the future of elections in general.
Cancellation
“Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow — come up with some rationale why it can't be held.”
Those are the words of former Vice President Joe Biden during an April 23 virtual fundraiser, discussing the possibility of President Donald Trump attempting to cancel the 2020 presidential election.
Biden is hardly the first person to worry that Trump could try to cancel the election. Numerous legal and constitutional experts have concluded that he has no legal power to do so, regardless of the pandemic or states of emergency that may be declared.
What gives rise to this fear, however, is Trump’s clear ignorance of the law and the Constitution and his demonstrated contempt for legal restraints on his actions.
Cancelling elections is a classic ploy of dictators, who of course want to rule without any democratic restraints and in the past they have used national emergencies to rule by decree. The classic example of this was Adolf Hitler who used the Reichstag fire of 1933 to get passed an enabling law that allowed him to rule without any checks or restraints.
If Trump succeeded in canceling the election it would mean the end of American democracy and establishment of an undisguised dictatorship.
Postponement
More likely than outright cancellation is the possibility that Trump could try to postpone the election, probably based on the state of the Coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, postponement now has precedents in the postponed primaries of this year.
Postponement is a slippery slope; if the presidential election is postponed an immediate fight would begin over setting a new date. There’s no guarantee that another election would be held later and it has the potential to effectively become a cancellation. It would also disrupt all the down-ballot elections critical to running the country under its current Constitution: federal senatorial and representative elections; state, local and municipal elections; and a wide array of policy questions and referenda.
An attempted postponement would be challenged in the courts and there would be an immense outcry. However, Trump has never shied away from court challenges and he has ignored past outcries.
Delegitimization
When he was facing an electoral loss in 2016 Trump denounced the electoral system as “rigged” against him. He has begun doing the same again this year, tweeting on May 1: “Don’t allow RIGGED ELECTIONS!”
While this might be a sentiment all Americans would rightly share, coming from Donald Trump it could also be seen as a threat against an election outcome that he might try to delegitimize with charges of fraud or rigging.
Trump has always attempted to delegitimize anything he doesn’t like: the news media, governors, Democrats, other nations. When he was in private life this was just disparagement. On the campaign trail, it was just denigration. But as president, it is a strategy of stripping credibility from national institutions and constitutional checks and balances that stand in his way.
Of course, if he wins through the Electoral College or Russian interference, his victory will ipso-facto become legitimate in his own eyes.
However, there is a strong possibility that Trump will try to delegitimize the entire election if the outcome is not to his liking.
Invalidation
Should he lose the election, Trump may try to legally invalidate the outcome, challenging it in court, alleging fraud and refusing to abide by its results.
In the past Trump has alleged that he lost the New Hampshire primary due to massive voter fraud and that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 popular vote victory was similarly due to voter fraud.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he tweeted on Nov. 27, 2016, repeating the allegation in a January meeting with members of Congress.
There has never been any credible evidence of these allegations and in fact a commission Trump established to investigate them ultimately disbanded without validating any charges.
Trump’s fantasies of massive voter fraud cost taxpayer money to investigate but this year he might use them to try to try to invalidate the results of an election. This is not the same as delegitimization; it is an attempt to declare the results legally invalid and of no force.
Should he lose, Trump might also refuse to concede or relinquish power in January 2021. Although the United States has never had a fight over electoral legitimacy, other countries have in the past and a prolonged struggle risks civil disorder or even domestic war.
Suppression
Voter suppression has long been a problem in US elections but given the patchwork of election jurisdictions and the decentralized nature of the US electoral system, it has been done at the state and local level.
However, with mail-in voting on a massive scale likely this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump has verbally attacked the US Postal Service (USPS), tried to starve it of funds and denounced voting-by-mail as potentially fraudulent.
“Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans,” Trump tweeted on April 8 at 7:20 am. By 6:34 pm that day he felt he had to tweet a clarification: “Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who can’t get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is “RIPE for FRAUD,” and shouldn’t be allowed!”
It seems doubtful that Trump could stop all voting by mail or otherwise suppress sufficient votes by command. However, his rhetoric and his encouragement of vote suppression from the bully pulpit of the White House could encourage state and local officials to conduct suppressive activities in order to skew the election in his favor.
* * *
These are just some of the scenarios threatening this year’s elections.
However, in addition to all these scenarios there is another one and it is this: The election takes place as scheduled. The weather cooperates. Voting is orderly. People can vote in whatever form they choose. All who wish to vote do so. The count is honest and accurate. The results are accepted by all parties and the public. Power is conferred peacefully, legitimately and legally. The country heals.
What are the chances?