There’s a lot Trump can do to stay at the helm

The truth is that Trump has enough weapons in his Administration to legally subvert the coming election. US laws provide for such an eventuality. It is just that these methods have never been used or required to be used because presidential elections have been orderly and transitions in the White House have been smooth. The only recent exception was in 2000.

Mala fide: This year, as postal votes will determine the winner, Trump has installed his hatchet man as Postmaster-General.

KP Nayar

Strategic Analyst

The best political work in the world that anyone can wish for this year is that of an international election observer in the voting to choose a new President of the United States of America.

Twenty years ago, when an inconclusive result shocked the world in the Al Gore vs George W Bush contest, The Economist carried a cartoon that is etched in memory on the bewildering vote count in Florida, which was ended by the US Supreme Court and resulted in a dubious victory for Bush.

The cartoon showed election observers declaring the vote count in Florida to be fair and the certification of Bush to become the 43rd US President as above board. A crowd of people watching these poll monitors ask one another about the credibility of these observers and their antecedents. “They are from Pakistan,” says one American in the crowd to the others. “They are here to determine if our voting was free and the counting was legitimate.”

The biting irony and sarcasm in the cartoon were lost on no one. General Pervez Musharraf had just subverted democracy in Pakistan by overthrowing the elected government of Nawaz Sharif and suspended the Constitution. And his people were in Florida to give a certificate of fair play in the American election.

The irony for real-life poll observers in the upcoming fight between President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden will be infinitely more than for the fictional cartoon characters. If observers are called upon this November to certify the result in which Trump claims victory in a disputed election and refuses to leave the White House, they may find themselves on the horns of a dilemma.

Last week, Trump threatened to do just that. The truth is that he has enough weapons in the armoury of his Administration to legally subvert the coming election. America’s laws provide for such an eventuality. It is just that these legal methods of subversion have never been used or required to be used because presidential elections have been orderly and transitions in the White House have been smooth. The only recent exception was in 2000.

The general rule that fits mankind is that laws are made for the men and women who live by them. The US is the only country in the world where the reverse is true: its citizens are born into law and are bred by its laws. From the moment a child is born in America, through adulthood and even after death, he or she is encumbered by tens of thousands of rules which weigh on every aspect of American life.

That is why the most lucrative profession in America is that of a lawyer. Nothing of consequence can be done in the US without legal clearance. A wisecrack, which turns out to be true, is that an American household consists of husband, wife, children and the family lawyer.

So, if Trump decides in five weeks to interpret or enforce existing laws to perpetuate himself in power, not only the election observers, but also the American people, as a law-abiding society, will have to put up with such presidential overreach. Because, all of it will be done within the bounds of law, but not morality.

Al Gore’s greatness as a leader is that he did not do what Trump threatened last week he would do. As sitting Vice-President and ex-officio President of an evenly divided Senate, Gore had the legal means to overturn a US Supreme Court ruling on December 12, 2000, which effectively handed the presidency to Bush. Even before the matter reached the Senate, the Florida legislature, if it so wished, had the power to nullify what the Supreme Court had ordered.

These are some of the legal tools that are available to those in power in America, whether it is in a state or at the federal level. An incumbent administration has many more weapons. Instead of borrowing them, Gore went out the day after the Supreme Court verdict and gracefully conceded defeat. He did not wish to drag the world’s oldest democracy through the ignominy of a disputed election. No wonder, he went to pieces afterwards and self-destructed, having volunteered to renounce the biggest prize of his political career.

In addition to all the old tools, a federal judge recently handed down a ruling which allows Trump’s storm-troopers in Republican states to do exactly what used to happen in Bihar elections before TN Seshan, as Chief Election Commissioner, put a stop to voter suppression.

The 2018 ruling permits armed Republican squads to question, intimidate, threaten and finally stop those who are not from their party from casting votes. On paper, Democrats are free to do the same in the states they control, but Biden’s campaigners will not do any such thing because such intimidation will work only against African-Americans, Hispanics, poor people and first- time voters, who are unsure of their rights or too timid to stand up against such tactics.

If Democrats were to foolishly attempt any such thing against a white voter in Texas or Alabama, the white man will instantly draw his gun and shoot the intimidator. But the minorities, the uneducated and the poor, who are historically Democratic voters, will take intimidation lying down as voters in Bihar and some other states did for many decades. In legal colloquialism, the 2018 judgement, which permits Trump supporters to create the ‘National Ballot Security Task Force’ is known as the now-expired ‘consent decree’.

Voting by mail is scheduled to start in half of American states by next week. This year, it will be the postal votes which will determine the winner for the White House. An unprecedented number of voters, scared off by Covid-19 from polling stations, are voting by mail.

With mala fide foresight, Trump installed his hatchet man as America’s Postmaster-General four months ago. Louis DeJoy will unhesitatingly use his legal authority to slow down, disrupt and discredit mail-in voting, which Trump has already called a fraud. There is a lot more that Trump can do legally from now till November 3 and beyond to remain in power, no matter what the American voters want.