The US mid-term elections begin on Friday September 4 amid confusion around postal voting, as the first ballots are sent out and Donald Trump seeks to obtain new restrictions from the courts on their processing.
North Carolina has started sending out ballots, officially launching an election sequence that will culminate on November 3 and decide the majority in Congress for the final two years of the US president’s term. But voters and election officials still don’t know what rules might apply to millions of ballots sent by mail.
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Donald Trump, who has made this issue a hobby horse, is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate restrictions on postal voting which had been adopted by decree before then being blocked by a judge.
Meanwhile, states are preparing as best they can for changes that could come after voting begins.
“It is the States that set the terms, not the president”
The dispute was reinforced this week by the accusations of a whistleblower against the new system put in place by the US Postal Service to comply with Donald Trump’s decree.
This orders states to create a list of eligible voters, and the Postal Service to only issue mail-in ballots to those listed on it.
“Potentially, millions of American voters may not receive – on time or at all – their mail-in ballots for the upcoming election,” the whistleblower warned.
The envelopes containing the ballots should also include barcodes, with the Post Office having the authority to refuse shipments that do not meet its requirements.
The government says these rules are intended to protect the integrity of elections. For years, Donald Trump has been insisting without proof that postal voting encourages fraud, while resorting to it himself, notably during the Republican primary in Florida last month.
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This uncertainty adds to an electoral system that already varies widely by state. “It is the states that set the date, place and manner of elections in this country, not the president,” said Marc Elias, founder of the American voting rights platform Democracy Docket, in his YouTube show. “Congress can override the states in many cases, but the president cannot in any case. The president has no power over federal elections.”
North Carolina officials said Friday’s shipments would proceed as normal and that the state had no plans to use the system at the heart of the dispute.
Trump’s popularity at an all-time low
Time is running out for any nationwide reform. Friday marks the start of the 60-day period before the election provided for by the decree for states to transmit information on voters.
Eighteen other states are expected to begin distributing ballots approximately 45 days before November 3.
Election officials would therefore have little time to change envelope designs, update computer systems, train employees and import election data if the courts allow the restrictions to take effect.
A federal judge weighing whether to extend the temporary block on the president’s plan warned Thursday that rushed changes could cause significant disruption. “We are not solving an intellectual puzzle,” Judge Indira Talwani reportedly told a lawyer defending the restrictions, in remarks widely reported by the American media. “We are talking about citizens’ right to vote.”
This standoff, which is added to the conflicts around partisan electoral redistricting in around a dozen states, is playing out against a backdrop of considerable political stakes.
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The “midterms” seem to be off to a bad start for the Republican majority, with Donald Trump’s popularity at its lowest, between the war in Iran and soaring prices, particularly those of energy.
According to a Cornell University projection model, the Democratic opposition has an eight in ten chance of taking control of the Lower House.
With AFP
