'Red mirage': the 'insidious' scenario if Trump
declares an early victory
US
elections 2020
The situation could develop if the president appears
to be leading on election night before all votes are counted – and for some
officials, it’s too realistic for words
Tom
McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
Email
Sat 31 Oct
2020 06.15 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/red-mirage-trump-election-scenario-victory
Scenarios
for how an election disaster could unfold in the United States next week
involve lawsuits, lost ballots, armed insurrection and other potential crises
in thousands of local jurisdictions on 3 November.
But there
is one much simpler scenario for election-night chaos, centering on a single
address, that many analysts see as among the most plausible.
The
scenario can be averted, election officials say, by heightening public
awareness about it – and by cautioning vigilance against carefully targeted
lies that Donald Trump has already begun to tell.
Known as
the “red mirage”, the scenario could develop if Trump appears to be leading in
the presidential race late on election night and declares victory before all
the votes are counted.
The red
mirage “sounds like a super-villain, and it’s just as insidious”, the former
Obama administration housing secretary Julían Castro says in a video recorded
as a public service announcement to voters this week.
“On
election night, there’s a real possibility that the data will show Republicans
leading early, before all the votes are counted. Then they can pretend
something sinister’s going on when the counts change in Democrats’ favor.”
In the
scenario, Trump’s declaration of victory is echoed on the conservative TV
network Fox News and by powerful Republicans across the US. By the time final
returns show that in fact Joe Biden has won the presidency, perhaps days later,
the true election result has been dragged into a maelstrom of disinformation
and chaos.
To some
officials, the scenario is too realistic for words. A potential multi-day delay
in counting votes is anticipated in Philadelphia, whose mostly Democratic votes
are crucial for Biden to win in Pennsylvania, currently the state the quants
see as most likely to tip the election one way or the other.
After
counting only 6,000 absentee ballots in the 2016 election, the city of
Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, expects to
receive and count as many as 400,000 mail-in ballots this year, with the
coronavirus pandemic raging.
All of
those ballots will be counted inside the city’s cavernous convention center on
Arch Street, beginning at 7am on the day of the election, by an army of poll
workers, including many new recruits, using recently purchased equipment.
The delay
that officials know will be required to finish the counting could be enough
time for Trump to sow doubt about the result, an effort the president has
already begun.
“Bad things
happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said at the first presidential debate in
September, warning about “tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated” and
“urging my people” to watch polling sites carefully, despite there being no
evidence of widespread fraud in US elections.
Current and
former Pennsylvania officials and activists say that the antidote to the “red
mirage” is as simple as the scenario itself.
The public
must understand, these officials say, that Philadelphia will not be able to
report its election result on the night of 3 November, and may not be able to
do so for days afterward, owing to the extraordinary circumstances that the
pandemic has wrought.
In turn,
the surge of Democratic votes out of Philadelphia, when they do land, will
probably create the perception of a huge swing in the state to Biden. And
finally, that swing could well be large enough to erase a lead that Trump might
build up in rural counties elsewhere in the state – to appear to turn Pennsylvania
from “red” to “blue” – and to potentially decide the entire election.
“All votes
will not be counted by midnight on November 3,” said Tom Ridge, a former
Republican governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary under
George W Bush who decries Trump’s “absolutely despicable conduct and rhetoric”
about the election.
“Because of
Covid-19, there’ll be millions of mail-in votes that it’ll take several days to
tally,” Ridge said in a phone interview. “One of the ways to reduce the anxiety
level is to remind Americans of that reality, and call for peace and patience
so that every vote can be counted.”
The
blood-curdling thing about the red-mirage scenario, for some analysts, is that
some aspects of it look more like a certainty than a scenario.
People should
know that there will not be a result on election night
Lisa Deeley
“People
should know that there will not be a result on election night,” said Lisa
Deeley, chair of a three-member panel of Philadelphia city commissioners that
runs the election. “So people will go to bed and we won’t have that count
finished. But we will be working continuously, through the night, to make sure
we get that count as quickly and accurately – we won’t sacrifice accuracy for
speed.”
“The key
term is ‘election week’,” said Patrick Christmas, policy director of the
non-partisan Committee of Seventy good government organization in Philadelphia.
“There’s no longer going to be an election day here.”
As
plausible as it is, however, there are also many reasons why a “red mirage”
scenario might not unfold. Biden could put the race away with a win earlier on
election night in a key battleground state such as Florida. Or Biden could win
the state of Pennsylvania, where he leads by 6 points in polling averages,
without needing the last 200,000 or so votes out of Philadelphia.
Alternatively,
a “red mirage” for Trump might develop elsewhere in the country, outside of
Philadelphia – anywhere that a big city in a swing state, from Milwaukee to
Miami to Cleveland, ends up taking a long time to report results.
But the
enormous task that Philadelphia faces in counting an unprecedented number of
mail-in ballots while observing social distancing and other coronavirus
mitigation measures means the city is in a uniquely difficult spot.
Making life
more difficult for Philadelphia election officials, negotiations broke down
last week between the state’s Republican-led legislature and the Democratic
governor to allow the processing of mail-in ballots – meaning removing the
ballots from their envelopes and smoothing them for insertion into counting
machines – before election day itself.
Florida
allows weeks for such early processing, as do North Carolina, Arizona and other
battleground states, making it possible for those states to report results
promptly on election night. Wisconsin, another key battleground, does not have
early processing, while Michigan allows just one day for early processing.
“It’s very
sad to me, it’s very troubling, that the political parties couldn’t agree on
this,” said Ridge, who is involved in two bipartisan organizations to secure
the ballot, Vote Safe and the National Council for Election Integrity.
At the
Pennsylvania convention center in downtown Philadelphia, mail-in ballots are
already on site, under lock and key, waiting for election day.
Promptly at
7am, officials will begin to feed the ballots into new extraction machines that
use suction cups to open the ballots’ outer envelopes so that officials can
remove an inner privacy envelope containing the ballot. Then the ballot must
pass through the extraction machine again. Then the ballot must be smoothed,
and then put through a counting machine.
The key term is ‘election week’. There’s no
longer going to be an election day here
Patrick
Christmas
Many
representatives from each party will be allowed inside the convention center to
observe the process, but arrangements for media to be inside have been shelved.
Any ballot whose validity is contested – perhaps because the voter neglected to
use the inner envelope, rendering a so-called “naked” ballot – must be reviewed
by commissioners in a process that has not been publicly described.
“There are
challenge guidelines that are outlined in the state election code, and we will
follow those guidelines,” Deeley said.
Some
election observers fear that the presence inside the hall of Trump supporters
could create an opportunity for havoc – especially with concerns about
coronavirus – that could interrupt the operation in a way that could allow Trump
to amplify his claims of fraud in Philadelphia.
Deeley said
election officials were prepared for attempts to tamper in the election.
“There’s
security at the convention center,” she said, and pointed to statements by
Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, that the city was ready to
prosecute election-related wrongdoing.
“He
announced he’s ready to go, and that’s not going to be allowed on Philadelphia
election day.”
In each
election, voters entrust their neighbors who volunteer as poll workers to tally
election results, and that trust is as well-placed this year as in years past,
no matter what Trump says, Ridge said.
“For him to
suggest that these local officials would engage in willful, intentional,
massive fraud, in order to discredit or delegitimize the process, is
unfathomable and unpresidential,” Ridge said.
“We’ve
hopefully begun to inoculate and educate Americans around the necessity of
patience so that every vote can be counted.”
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