While votes were being counted after the US elections of
November 2020, despots from around the world – in Iran, Russia, China,
Venezuela and Brazil – crowed over the delay in announcing results.[1] It
is easy for rulers in countries where opposition leaders are disqualified,
killed or hounded into exile to mock the time taken to count votes
meticulously. However, many of us watching with envy from afar – ‘envy’ because the persecution of
minorities, crushing of dissent, domination of the media and destruction of
democratic institutions has gone much further in our countries – have nothing
but admiration for the way in which a would-be dictator has peacefully been
overthrown.
But what about claims by the Trump campaign that the election was stolen? It is clear to us that there have been systematic efforts to steal this election… by Trump and his diehard supporters. That became evident well before the election when he started alleging, in the midst of a deadly pandemic in which many feared the risks of in-person voting, that he opposed extra funding for the Postal Service because mail ballots encouraged voter fraud. At the same time Republican mega-donor Louis DeJoy, who was appointed Postmaster General by Trump on 15 June, began making changes to the U.S. Postal Service – like a reduction in employee overtime hours and the elimination of postal sorting machines – that would sabotage the timely delivery of mail ballots.[2] We saw reports of polling locations being shut down and African-Americans complaining about the long distances they had to travel in order to vote. With Trump instructing his supporters to come out and vote on election day, and several states counting mail-in ballots only after in-person ballots had been counted, the scene was set for his post-election claim that he had won. He expected the case to go to the Supreme Court, and explicitly stated that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the court because he believed she would vote in his favour.[3]