Election is Far from Over

Just the other day, Barack Obama warned: “Don’t get complacent. This election is far from over.” He’s right. The American people seem to get it — many of them, voting early en masse, shattering records. The intelligentsia, meanwhile, seems to think the election is already over.   

They are badly wrong, and Obama is right. This election is far from over. 

I learned something absolutely, gobsmackingly alarming today. The Electoral College technically votes on December 14th, almost six weeks after the popular vote. 

That is to say: the electors can change the outcome of the election a month after the people have voted. Those who may want to influence the election have a month after the popular vote to influence electors to change their vote. 

Think about how much uncertainty that creates. Given all this chaos, how do electors know which way to vote, when the recounts haven’t stopped, when there’s no clarity? And so maybe along the way a few of those electors’ minds are changed, too. 

This terrible design for an electoral system is now creating massive systemic risk for American democracy. For there to be a six week window between a popular vote, and the actual decision by a tiny number of people who really is President is something like a gaping flaw, a wide open backdoor that was always waiting to be exploited by a clever hacker. 

So. To understand just how alert we need to be, let me return to my four possible election scenarios. The first is that Trump wins outright. The nightmare scenario, in other words, for America, the world, and the future. Trump’s Army of American Idiots carries him, jeering, over the finish line. How likely is that? It’s still well within the realm of possibility, as in it has every chance of happening. Look at margins in swing states. In Florida, Biden’s ahead by 3.8 points — in Iowa, by 1.1. 

What does that mean, in hard terms? That the slightest secret hate vote — what pundits call “shy” Trump voters  — will push Trump over the edge. 3% here, 5% there, factoring in the margin of error. The secret hate vote, which by now is a term you should already intuitively know, is the idea that certain groups tell pollsters one thing — what they think is the socially acceptable one — and then turn right around in the heat and silence of the voting booth, and do another. 

We don’t know what the secret hate vote is going to be. But ruling out this possibility would mean that we would have to rule out any secret hate vote entirely. That isn’t plausible, for the simple reason that the secret hate vote has played a bigger and bigger role in not just American, but global politics, over the last decade. Politics are destabilizing, and what “destabilizing” means is that phenomena like secret hate votes emerge, as trust breaks down, social bonds come undone, optimism dies, and nobody much believes in the system anymore. 

So to imagine that there won’t be any secret hate vote at all is stretching the bounds of credibility too far — history alone tells us there will surely be. The only question is: how big will it be? Will white women vote for their fair-haired demagogue all over again? What about young people — will they vote enough at all? We don’t know. And so what we must conclude, if we are trying to be rational, at least, is that the possibility Trump wins outright is still very real. It is not something to be ruled out, as pundits are doing prematurely. Obama is quite correct to warn of complacency. 

Because, of course, if Trump wins outright, American fascist authoritarianism will be unleashed, a second Trump term will spell the end of American democracy, and Americans will learn the hard way what “abuse of power” and “crimes against humanity” really mean, as Gestapos beating and disappearing people in the streets become everyday events. 

But I digress. 

The first scenario, then, the nightmare scenario, can’t be ruled out. What about the second one? That’s the one where there’s a narrow margin of victory for Biden. Let’s call this the contested election scenario. What about that one? When you factor in margins in swing states and subtract a reasonable estimate of a secret hate vote from them — say half of what it was last time — you end up somewhere close to this scenario. 

So Biden is forecast to eke out a narrow victory.  That’s good, right? Well, it’s better than the first scenario, where Trump wins outright. But it’s not good, per se, because it might not be good enough to preserve American democracy. 

This is where the soft coup that seems to have already been set in motion kicks in. That soft coup has five elements, as I’ve discussed: delegitimizing the vote, challenging it legally, contesting it all the way to the Supreme Court, electoral arm-twisting, and political violence. Every single one of those elements now becomes crucial, and the GOP bets on them — just like they did by installing Amy Coney Barrett, willing to stop at nothing. 

The vote is called “fraudulent” by every leading member of the GOP, who all demand recounts, and the legal challenges begin. That’s step one. Step two is that the electoral arm-twisting begins. “The vote was fraudulent, you can’t trust it!” cries the GOP. “Give your electoral votes to us,” they demand of electors in the college. Implicitly, they promise rewards of position and power. 

Would all that work? The bad news is that the likelihood is that it would work. The soft coup would succeed. That’s almost a sure outcome of simply math and basic logic. If Biden’s margin of forecasted victory on election night is just a few electoral college votes, just a few percent here and there in swing states — then all the GOP would have to do is persuade a tiny, tiny number of electors, judges, governors, and county officials to decide the election for them. And they would have an almost irrefutable and inescapable backup plan, now, too: the Supreme Court, which, thanks to a fanatic like ACB on it, would surely decide it for them. 

Bang. This scenario, Biden winning by a narrow margin on election night, which you might think is a good one, doesn’t lead to American democracy being preserved, prevailing. It could still lead to a Trump victory. At least that’s the likelihood. I’d put the odds that this potential soft coup prevails far, far higher than I would the rusted, broken institutions protecting American democracy — electors, county officials, state governors, the Supreme Court. 

So, the first two scenarios lead to game over. That’s already not good. What about the next two?

The third scenario is called “when the smoke clears.” It means that on election night, and in the days and weeks that follow it, nobody really knows who wins, because everything seems to be up in the air. Votes in swing states are too close for any kind of certainty, and that’s true at the national level, too. So electors simply hang up their hats until the recounts are finished. But the recounts drag on and on because the challenges keep on coming. Nobody genuinely knows, or can say, yet, and this situation drags on for weeks, and then months. 

Which side does this scenario favor? This scenario is the victory of the potential soft coup. Make no mistake: when you don’t know who’s won in a democracy, the bad guys have. What this scenario means, effectively, is that there’s a war of attrition over democracy itself — and the tactics to delegitimize the vote are winning. 

After all, over time, the vote can’t really grow any more legitimate. It can only grow less so. 

So the longer this situation drags on, the worse things get for American democracy. These ballots are spoiled, those don’t count, these are questionable. Those voters didn’t have ID, these votes were mysteriously lost, Judge Roscoe P Coltrane throws out this county and that county’s votes to please the good ole boys. Every time the challenge has to go up another level in the courts, inertia and momentum are lost. 

After a time, a sense of weariness and fatigue begin to set in. Maybe we should just concede, says a faction of the good guys — something that often happens in failing states — and you can see the Dems doing that a country mile away. And by the time things look finalized, that sense of fatigue ultimately normalizes the loss of democracy. It’s been a slow, creeping process — and people are simply worn down, inured, made to feel resigned, conditioned into a kind of learned helplessness. By the time the so-called “faithless electors” change their votes, and give Trump another term, the Dems are ready to concede, and Americans are so broken down by COVID, poverty, and despair, that they just want to get on with it. 

You can see how clever that element of the soft coup — influencing the electoral college — really is, then. There are almost six weeks after the election during which it can be manipulated in the most direct way. All that they really have to do is convince as few as a dozen people — people with political ambitions of their own — that the vote was fraudulent or flawed and so on, over those crucial six weeks, and bang: they’ve won the election. 

You might think this scenario is unlikely, but the fact is it’s probably the most likely. We aren’t likely to know as much on election night as we usually do. This time, things really are different. Early voting is massive, and the closer we get to the election the bigger it gets. Counts and recounts are likely to change numbers for days and weeks leading up to the electoral college vote — and that’s not even beginning to factor in legal contests.  

So this scenario — the nobody knows who wins until the smoke clears — is another terrible one. In all likelihood, it ends with American democracy dying. Go ahead and think about it. If nobody knows, do you really think that the electoral college can be counted on to do the right thing, while the Supreme Court is busy backing the GOP? The chances are that what seems like a soft coup prevails in this scenario, too. 

Now let’s come to the last one. Biden wins by a landslide. Everywhere that he needs too. In all the crucial swing states. So there is absolutely no doubt that Biden is the rightful winner. The margin is so great that that much is obvious even on election night. A thousand recounts in a dozen states won’t do anything to change it. 

This is the only scenario in which American democracy has a solid and significant chance of prevailing. That’s because, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s the only one in which the death spirals above are all prevented. There doesn’t need to be recount after recount because there is clarity from the beginning. Legal challenges are therefore likely to be impotent — though they’ll certainly be mounted. The Supreme Court has no reason, therefore, to step in — even if it it’s aching to. And electors have no legitimate reason whatsoever to go “faithless,” and change their votes for Trump, even if their arms are being twisted, even if they hope to. 

All the five elements of the seeming soft coup that are already underway are stopped dead in their tracks, in other words. It is made to fizzle out before it has a chance to really explode. This is the only way, by the way, to stop a soft coup: decisively, before it gathers critical mass, with a demonstrative show of unity. 

Can Americans really do that? What likelihood is there of Biden really winning by a landslide? Let me put it this way. It can’t be high enough. That is, it’s still up for doubt, no? And until it isn’t, then there’s more work to do. 

Certainty seems to be growing by the day, as early voting favors Democrats heavily, especially with young people and women.  That is crucial — because the only way this scenario comes to pass is if there really is no secret hate vote, but the precise opposite: last time’s secret hate voters becoming this time’s good and decent voters, last time’s apathetic no-shows this time turning out in force. That seems to be what’s happening — sure. But “seems” is a dangerous word to use when everything is on the line, and you’re one tiny step away from disaster. 

These last ten days couldn’t be more crucial, therefore. I’d put it like this. There are four scenarios possible in the upcoming election. Three out of four still end with American democracy dying. If we weight those scenarios equally, as we might have done a month ago, that gives American democracy just a 25% chance of surviving. Those odds might have gone up, over the last few months, and they might be going up by the day. Do you think they’ve doubled? That’s probably reasonable. But even a 50% chance of a democracy surviving is not a very good one. 

The chances of American democracy’s survival, in other words, started from a viciously, abysmally low base. They might be improving, but they must improve still more, as much as they can, in these last few moments. Right about now, they might be around 50%, maybe even 60%, if America’s lucky. And yet that’s not high enough. You wouldn’t gamble your life savings on an even chance, would you. 

So Obama’s right. 

Don’t get complacent. This election’s far from over. The pundits are wrong. Take it seriously. You know what to do. Vote, if you haven’t. Take a friend, take ten. Make ten new ones and take them. Make sure everyone you know has. Educate them about the scenarios above. Run the numbers in your own head. Do the math. Think it through. And steel yourself, my friend, for the battle ahead. Because the truth is that even if the bad guys lose badly on election night — the work has only really just begun.

(Umair Haque writes for Eudaimonia and Co. Posted most recently by Medium.com.) [Image Credit: Doug Mills. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.