The coronavirus pandemic has been weaponised by Trump in this year’s presidential election with the aim of strengthening his in-person vote count to the extent that he can claim a fig-leaf of legitimacy when (as is expected) he claims victory on the night of the election and calls for an early end to the counting of the remaining uncounted mail-in-ballots. This article explains how the pandemic has been weaponised in this election to this end.
The American political class is caught in a paralysing dilemma that norm-abiding elites are often forced into by shameless authoritarians willing to go to any lengths to hold onto power. Namely, they are forced to affirm their confidence in an electoral process they know could be manipulated to manufacture a result favourable to the authoritarian so that voters will not become discouraged and decline to vote altogether. Moreover, they are forced to affirm their commitment to accepting the result of the election, one of the foundational norms of a functioning democracy, even when the authoritarian candidate has made it clear they have no intention of respecting the result if it does not give them victory.
However, this – “I will abide strictly by democracy even if my opponent does not” – defence of democratic norms leaves status-quo elites impaired in their ability to warn the democratic public of possible threats to the integrity of an election, and enervated in their ability to contest the results of an election even if they strongly suspect foul play. This is why neutral observers from the UN and other NGOs play such an important role in protecting free and fair elections in immature democracies, for actors enmeshed in the electoral competition themselves cannot cast light on the pathologies and irregularities of an election without in some way damaging the credibility of that election in the process.
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