USA: Confidence in the Legitimacy of Elections Declining

2024-10-29 09:51:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

On November 5, the elections in the USA take place. Since 2020, especially among Republicans, there is a great distrust of the results. In the swing state of Georgia, Trump supporters control the election authority.

It is a new record: on Tuesday, October 15, the first day of "early voting", more than 310,000 voters voted in the southern American state of Georgia. In the USA, elections are not held on any Sunday or holiday, but on a regular weekday. Often on this day there are long queues in front of polling stations. Those who do not have time to stand in line for hours to vote on election day, in most states can vote a few weeks before the November 5 presidential election.

On the first day in Georgia, more than twice the number of people who voted on the first day of "early voting" in the last presidential election voted. According to the Georgia Election Board - the authority responsible for conducting elections in Georgia - election workers will have a lot of work with the counting after November 5. At the end of September, the electoral board approved a rule according to which ballots in this state should no longer be counted by machine, but by hand.

It will take a little longer, says Janelle King, one of the Board of Elections' five members, but she doesn't want the board to "put speed over accuracy."

Which counts better: man or machine?

The idea that a human can count better and more accurately than a machine may be understandable to some. But it's not accurate for one simple reason, says Rachael Cobb, professor of political science at Suffolk University in Boston. "People make mistakes, it's just human nature. Machines sometimes make mistakes, but we can test the equipment, check it and repair what caused the error," Cobb says in an interview with DW.

She researches the conduct of elections and election administration. Humans generally make more mistakes because, unlike machines, they eventually tire, Cobb says.

Perhaps this is how a judge also saw the case, when he stopped the manual counting on Tuesday (15.10.2024). No training is planned for election officials and changing the procedure so close to the election would lead to chaos, Judge Robert McBurney argued in his ruling. Therefore, the votes in the upcoming presidential elections in Georgia will be counted as usual by machine.

USA: Confidence in the Legitimacy of Elections Declining

These hikes highlight a problem that has plagued the US for years: fewer and fewer Americans believe that democratic elections in their country are fair. A survey by the Gallup polling institute in September 2024 found that 19 percent of participants have no confidence in either the legitimacy of the election or the legitimacy of its result. In 2004, this figure was six percent. Distrust is more widespread among Republicans - only 28 percent believe everything will go well in the election.

In 2020, this figure was 44 percent. Four years ago, when Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, a 55 percent majority of Republicans believed in fair and legitimate elections.

"If your candidate wins, you tend to believe that everything went well in the election," says Cobb.

That Republican confidence has fallen sharply since 2020 is because Trump and his supporters are convinced that the 2020 election was "stolen." They say Trump was robbed of the victory by rigging the results. These conspiracy myths were debunked by meticulous recounts and multiple court rulings, but Trump continues to refuse to admit that he lost. Trump's supporters have the majority on board.

Among the Trump loyalists who continue to support this election lie are three members of the five-member board of elections in Georgia. That majority in this hotly contested state, where Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris are running head-to-head, could be decisive in November. Four years ago, Georgia was one of the states where the results were so close that there were many disputes and Republicans insisted on a recount before the results could be certified. The Board of Elections is heavily involved in these processes — and as of May of this year, the majority is made up of Trump supporters.

It can't be proven, but Cobb suspects the three-member effort to institute manual counting may have been a political strategy. "To say that the method used until now was bad and should be changed urgently, arouses distrust, even if the new method is not better at all", says the political scientist.

After the court's decision, counting will be done by machine, as before. But the election board's statements could cast doubt on the results in Georgia, especially if the numbers were against Donald Trump.

Georgia election authority and impact on election outcome

Is a pro-Trump entity responsible for counting and certifying a single state's election results able to influence the overall election outcome? "If the margin is large and it would be impossible for the loser to get the necessary number of votes even in the event of a recount, then it doesn't matter if the board is pro-Trump," Cobb says.

But Georgia is a swing state, one where Democrats and Republicans take turns winning, which Democrats under Joe Biden took by just 0.2 percentage points in 2020. If the outcome of the Georgia election ultimately decides whether Harris or Trump will enter the White House - which is not excluded - the situation would become very tense.

The past elections have shown that in any case there will be people among the people who will not believe the final official result. US elections are generally well organized, says Cobb. "Election workers work hard to make sure everything goes right on election day," she says. "We have many laws in this country that guarantee that all voters' identities are verified, that their votes are are counted and the intention of the electorate is reflected in the results."/ DW