Washington: President Donald Trump’s continuous attacks on the security of mail-in ballots are compelling both parties to cope with the possibility that he may dispute the result in November if he faces a loss. This could lead to an unprecedented test of American democracy, The Washington Post reported.
There are rising concerns among scholars and his critics about the lengths he could go to hold on to power.But his unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power has forced academics and political leaders including some GOP lawmakers to contemplate possible scenarios.
Trump could also spend weeks refusing to concede amid a legal war over which votes are valid and should be included in the tally, according to legal and constitutional experts who are tracking Trump’s statements.
“What the president is doing is willfully and wantonly undermining confidence in the most basic democratic process we have,” said William A. Galston, chair of the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program. “Words almost fail me — it’s so deeply irresponsible. He’s arousing his core supporters for a truly damaging crisis in the days and weeks after the November election,” Washington Post reported.
Most legal experts agree that it is hard to actually envision for Trump to really try remaining in office even if he gets defeated by the former vice president Joe Biden. They said this considering the uproar that would follow such a challenge to U.S. democratic norms.
The resulting turmoil could surpass the contention which had occurred over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election which had confounded the legal system, Congress and the public’s belief in how the country chose its leaders. Such a crisis could also have long-lasting repercussions for a nation that has already been rocked this year by reckoning with racial injustice, the coronavirus disease pandemic, and economic collapse.
Among the conjectured possibilities, Trump could claim victory before the vote in key states is fully counted — a process that could take days or even weeks this year because of the expected avalanche of absentee ballots.
He could also spend weeks refusing to concede amid a legal war over which votes are valid and should be included in the tally, according to legal and constitutional experts who are tracking Trump’s statements.
“This president is going to try to steal this election,” the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden told Trevor Noah who hosts ‘The Daily Show’, last month.
Biden said that he was sure that if Trump lost but did not leave, military leaders ‘would escort him from the White House with great dispatch’.
He also claimed without evidence that this year’s race will be “the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” as he put it last month.
This year, the president has attacked the security of voting by mail at least 50 times, according to a tally by The Washington Post, repeatedly making unfounded claims that it will lead to rampant fraud.
The president’s allies say they can envision this year’s election ending in the kind of extended legal fight that played out 20 years ago.
In 2000, Gore and Bush had waged a fierce legal fight over the vote count in Florida that ultimately went to the Supreme Court, but neither had threatened to reject the final outcome.