At 1 pm today (noon in Guyana) the United States Congress meets in a joint session to count the Electoral College votes, the penultimate step to the swearing in of Mr Joe Biden as US President. With the country still in the throes of what has been its most polarising election period to date (Georgia held its Senate run-off polls yesterday), this constitutionally required count is being closely watched and is not expected to be the simple process it usually is.
For one thing, incumbent Mr Donald Trump has not to date and probably never will concede, standing out as the first American President in modern history who has refused to do so. Not that a concession is required or mandatory, it is simply the honourable thing to do. For another, Mr Trump, whether because of desperation or delusion, seems somehow convinced that he has in fact won the election and by some miracle will serve for four more years. His claims of voter fraud in multiple states have grown ever more strident as the days go by even in the face of the dismissals in the courts of the legal challenges filed by his lawyers.
He is being bolstered in this fallacy by some Republicans and a dozen or so of them are expected to raise objections to the certified Electoral College votes from battleground states which swung from Red (Republican) to Blue (Democrat) when they are presented in today’s session. Though history reveals that this would not be the first time these votes have been challenged at the congressional level, it also shows that such objections have never been successful. Added to which the GOP was up to yesterday very divided on the issue, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being among those who considered it a terrible idea.
But nothing to date compares with the audacity displayed by Mr Trump in a conference call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, which has caused widespread consternation. During the telephone call, which lasted for just over an hour, Mr Trump pontificated for at least 40 minutes. He began by laying out his case as to why he believed he had won in Georgia citing rally sizes during the campaign, claims of fake voters and dead people voting. He recited wild conspiracy theories, restated disproven claims of election fraud, trotted out numbers that he sometimes seemed to be pulling out of thin air and importuned the state official to declare that he was going to re-examine the elections since “under new counts, and under new views, of the election results, we won the election”.
Mr Trump narrowly lost the state to Mr Biden and according to what he said in the telephone call, he wanted Mr Raffensperger, because he is a Republican, to repudiate the November 3 elections results. However, Mr Raffensperger did not appear to be thus inclined, as he politely declined saying, “President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don’t agree that you have won.”
What was particularly reprehensible about what could only be described as Mr Trump’s harassment of Mr Raffensperger was that he completely dismissed the tremendous work already done in Georgia with regard to the presidential election. Following the declaration of those election results and in the wake of complaints that voting machines had somehow flipped or changed votes, Georgia undertook a manual recount of the votes cast. It was deemed the largest hand tally of an election race in US history. Officials had to recount and audit nearly 5 million ballots in a polarised political environment and amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Carter Center, which had not monitored the US election, was, however, on the ground in Georgia for the hand count along with observers from the rival parties. At the conclusion, the result was the same and the Carter Center, which prides itself on being nonpartisan, found that the audit was properly and transparently conducted and could “serve as the basis for increased confidence in the electoral system in Georgia”.
Now if Mr Trump’s ranting on that now infamous phone call is to be believed, then the extrapolation has to be that the Carter Center, which has observed more than 100 elections around the world as a means of strengthening democracy and upholding human rights, is not credible. Not only that, but the fraud Mr Trump continues to allege places a smear on the US electoral process, and America’s claim to democracy, diminishing it as the role model it upholds itself to be. If what has been happening in the White House and in the Republican party since November 3 is not an example of just how power corrupts then what is?
Political pundits have declared that because of Mr Trump’s intransigence President-elect Biden faces an uphill task in uniting America once he assumes office on January 20. They are not wrong, but his labours to regain respectability for a country severely damaged by four years of megalomania will be far more arduous.
