TOI Correspondent from Washington: Americans are bracing for gridlock on November 5/6 with fervid talk in political circles about voting fraud and stolen elections. Partisan judges and litigators in a deeply polarized country are already duking it out in courts, questioning voter registrations and balloting procedures amid wild conspiracy theories that do not augur well for the November 5 Election Day and the results thereafter.
Over the weekend, an ABC affiliate station ignited a flurry of conspiracy talk after it aired what appeared to be official election results for Pennsylvania that showed Kamala Harris easily winning the key swing state a week before Election Day. In what was later clarified as randomly-generated numbers for test run, WNEP-TV showed Kamala Harris capturing 52% of the votes to 47% for Trump, with 100% of the precincts reporting, the way it is normally shown. The “result” was seen at the bottom of the screen during Sunday’s broadcast of the Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix.
The faux result freaked out MAGA activists who declared “the cheat is on” even as the station clarified that it was only a test run to help news organizations make sure their equipment is working properly in advance of election night. One tv station technician explained that stations do election ticker testing all the time and WNEP appeared to have forgotten to bypass to the network feed while testing.
The theme of Trump being denied a landslide by election fraud is particularly in the MAGA echo chamber where podcast talking heads such as Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, and Charlie Kirk are priming listeners to Trump theory that any result that does not show him as the winner can only mean voter fraud resulting in stolen elections.
MAGA talking heads have been working up froth as the expected blow-out by Trump of Harris is nowhere is sight, despite the MAGA supremo repeatedly claiming that he is leading in all seven battleground states, and his surrogates like Elon Mush throwing out numbers from betting markets showing him winning comfortably. More credible polls show them tied within the margin of error, some surveys showing Trump marginally ahead in some states, and Harris in others.
Democrats in turn are agitated about partisan judges ruling in favor of Republicans, as are MAGA folk about decisions in favor of Democrats. On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court allowed Virginia to purge about 1,600 people from its voter rolls, handing a provisional victory to Republican officials in the state who said the move was necessary to prevent noncitizens from voting. Notably, the ruling came in a 6-3 split, with the three liberal justices dissenting.
The situation is now so polarized that some MAGA talking heads are worrying about wives lying to their pro-Trump husbands and voting for Kamala Harris — mainly on account of the Republican stand on abortions — after a Harris campaign ad by Julia Roberts appeared to promote individual choice for women. One agitated Fox News anchor, Jesse Watters, raged that if his wife secretly voted for Harris, “that’s the same thing as having an affair… that would be D(ivorce) Day.” Watters’ mother incidentally is a Democrat who has berated him openly on live tv.
Some of the tension is spilling over to polling booths in early voting. In Texas, a white Trump supporter got into a spat with a black poll worker who told him that to remove his MAGA cap to obey the rules against wearing campaign paraphernalia in polling stations.