America drags its feet on Trump: Divided US struggles to choose President  

With President Donald Trump (74) pre-emptively filing cases in key battleground states holding the balance in the United States presidential election, it could be days, if not weeks, before the result of the 3 November electoral contest is resolved.

The legal challenges appear to have been mounted without any evidence; and have among sensible people become the butt of ridicule within and outside America. Trump’s Republican party lawyer Ben Ginsberg was quoted as saying, “they throw a lot of Hail Mary lawsuits at the wall and hope something sticks”.

Michael Link of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe told media: “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.”

In fact, armed pro-Trump protesters assembled in Phoenix, Arizona. In Detroit, Pennsylvania, where the president was leading, but was threatened to be overtaken, they shockingly demanded an end to counting.

Meanwhile, a far more dignified Democratic party challenger and former Vice-President of the US Joe Biden, 77, tweeted on Thursday: “Every vote must be counted.” Significantly, he had turned the tables on Trump in the blue-collar states of Michigan and Wisconsin – where the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had lost in 2016.

Trump has arguably been the most odious president in the history of the US. Completely unfit for the purpose. Vain, vicious, vile and vulgar. For four years since his unexpected victory – fuelled by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sabotaging his opponent Hillary Clinton’s prospects with a debatable and unproductive investigation into her use of a private email account when she was Secretary of State – he’s been a veritable bull in a china shop both within his country and internationally. His handling of COVID-19 epidemic - which has killed more people in the US than anywhere else - has been horrendous. Yet, astonishingly, American voters in this week’s quadrennial election have dragged their feet in ejecting him.

The boom and bust economy of the US has resulted in fluctuating levels of employment. This in turn has injected insecurity among the working even middle classes. In the US, foreign born nationals or residents – mainly Hispanics and Asians - were less than 5% in 1970. Now they constitute a component of nearly 20%.

Thus, the 61% non-Hispanic whites feel threatened in terms of their livelihoods. So, whether it is an economic or racist backlash, a significant segment of non-Hispanic Whites have veered inexorably towards intolerance in an already rather right-wing nation.

The @realDonaldTrump Twitter account attracts 87.9 million followers – a majority of them presumably Americans. @POTUS, the official handle of the US President, draws 32.2 million. While there is undoubtedly some duplication, this would not entirely be the case. In effect, in a country of 330 million people, Trump’s malicious messaging could be reaching a high percentage of households.

Since entering the administration, he has pummelled this captive audience – many of them unsuspecting or eager to believe him – with a daily barrage of disinformation, sometimes several times a day. In effect, the harmful phenomenon of today’s social media has detrimentally shaped public opinion in the US. Never has America been as divided and disharmonious between fellow citizens since its fractious civil war in the 1860s.

Electoral college votes – extracted from each of the 50 states that comprise the US - not the popular national vote, decide a US election. In the perpetual swing state of Florida, which throws up a tidy 29 electoral votes, people of Cuban origin were for months relentlessly targeted with a scare that a Joe Biden presidency will usher in communism in the US. Having escaped a one-party socialist state, their anathema for such a system is visceral. Apprehension of such a possibility, thereby, crucially tilted Cuban-American voters in the Miami area towards Trump to contribute to him carrying Florida.

At a Senate committee hearing, former director of FBI James Comey was asked: “Do you have any doubts that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?” He forcefully replied: “None.” Ion Sancho, a supervisor of elections was warned by the same agency “a foreign power has penetrated a vendor, which does work in Florida”. He told an investigative documentary: “It didn’t take us long to figure out that they were talking about the GRU, i.e. Russia’s military intelligence service.”

Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at University of California Berkeley, has devised what he describes as “an intelligent incremental recount” solution to counteract mal-intentioned cyberattacks on election systems.

Having closely monitored Tuesday’s voting, he stated: “There have been electronic problems (mostly with e-poll-books) in Georgia, Texas and Ohio. Georgia’s vulnerable touchscreen voting machines will determine which party controls the Senate, and possibly who is President.”

Since the Second World War, Democrat John Kennedy’s victory over Richard Nixon in 1960 was by a hair’s breadth. While he eventually secured a clear majority of 303 to 209 in the electoral votes, his margin in the popular vote was a mere 0.2%. The vanquished, who was the sitting Vice-President contemplated challenging the result, before wisely opting for discretion being the better part of valour.

In 2000, Republican George Bush was trailing Al Gore, who had notched up 266 electoral votes, with only Florida to be declared. After a controversial recount, the former was reported as winning the state by a wafer thin 537 votes or just 0.009% of the total cast.

The latter’s brother Jeb was governor of the state; and it was alleged election officials conspired to prevent Democratic voters from casting their ballot. Gore went to the extent of moving the US Supreme Court; but threw in the towel in the national interest, given the uncertainty caused by the five-week tussle. For the record, Bush scraped through with 271 electoral votes – the pass mark being 270 – despite obtaining 0.5% fewer popular votes.

US election rules understandably entitle a losing candidate to demand a recount, if the difference in the rival voting figures is less than 1% of the turnover. This was admittedly the case in a few states clinched by Biden; and Trump has indicated he will ask for the votes to be re-examined in Wisconsin. However, Trump’s wild accusations about being robbed, while not a surprise - since he had been loosely threatening legal action for weeks – lack credibility.

Such disruptive tactics – with lawyer and former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani leading the charge – are unlikely to find favour with the courts. It is unbecoming of a holder of high office to indulge in such methods. But then it’s Donald Trump!