Saturday Nov 23, 2024
Saturday Nov 23, 2024
Monday, 7 November 2016 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The ferocious competition between the two parties has increased the intensity of the final push in the US Presidential Campaign over the weekend, reflecting a tightening in the national and battleground state polls. While such movement is typical at the end of a presidential campaign, both sides see a shot at victory if they can get their voters to show up on Election Day.
However, most of America will have already voted by then, with a substantial percentage having already voted by mail. Faced with vague threats of voter intimidation at the polls tomorrow, many are going out of their way to vote early for the first time. Earlier this week, Google trends reported that searches for the question ‘where do I vote early?’ reached an all-time high.
Various tallies kept by elections experts show early voting could surpass 2012 in popularity by Election Day. The percentage of voters who cast ballots early rose from 30% in the 2008 US Presidential Election to 32% four years later in the 2012 Presidential Election. That represented about 46 million mail and in- person early votes.
For the 2016 election, approximately 34 million Americans have cast their ballots already, thus it is more accurate to call it ‘Election Weeks’, rather than Election Day.
The American System of early voting has its major advantages and for the most parts it is an idea that has caught on for all the right reasons. Early voting thins out the crowd on Election Day, preventing long lines that have marred past elections. It boosts turn out and reduces the chances that bad weather on Election Day will affect the outcome. It also increases voting opportunities for working people who often lack the flexible schedules needed to get to polls on a Tuesday.
Nearly 40 states allow early voting, however, critics say that one problem is have fixed the dates for early voting, too early. Six states start voting as early as September, about the time of the first presidential debate this year.
The speed and magnitude of the recent ‘October bomb shells’, demonstrate the dangers of allowing early voting. Since the practice began to spread in the 1990s the likelihood of late-breaking, game-changing developments has been thought to be quite low with this election being atypical. Yet, if the information voters would have got upto Election Day would change the outcome of only one in five US presidential races, the costs to democracy are huge.
Early voting means that different voters are voting based on a different choice proposition. The choice between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, before the revelations of Trump’s sexist comments about women and new revelations of a Justice Department investigation into Clinton’s e-mails, may not be the same, after. Yet in some places the ballots were already cast even before either development.
This was well reflected in what was told by those I interviewed. The majority of those interviewed from 1 November to date who had not cast their vote yet, were undecided. One voter said that she is between the devil and the deep blue sea. A dilemma faced by most was that they had issues with both the candidates and uncertainty had seeped into their minds.
They said, “Social media and news media propaganda had a lot to do with this year’s campaign to confuse the voter even more.” It was also a common view that it is a tough choice they were facing, to decide on the lesser of the two evils in the domineering two-party system.
By late evening tomorrow, results are expected to be out. Either one of the candidates of the 2016 US Presidential election, Hilary Clinton of the Democratic Party or Donald Trump of the Republican Party must obtain the 270 electoral votes if she or he is to be declared the winner.
American politics have essentially been a two-party system. But if both the candidates are unable to muster this figure, then the House members choose. They have one vote per state to consider the top three candidates which will include the Libertarian ticket of Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.
President Obama and Trump battle
This election has been termed unprecedented due to the many firsts that it has to its credit. Another one to add is the sitting President’s role in this election. President Barack Obama is believed to have campaigned harder than any President not running for re-election.
His campaigning has been described as an aggressive bid to stop Trump from winning the opportunity to dismantle his legacy. Obama has said that Trump is “unfit” for the Presidency. President Obama as a high profile campaign surrogate went on the attack last week.
“This is a guy who spent 70 years, his whole life, born with a silver spoon, showing no respect for working people,” he said.
Trump had only surrounded himself with “working people” when they were “cleaning his room”, the President accused. He went further at a rally in the crucial State of North Carolina, calling Trump, “a con-artist a know-nothing” and “temperamentally unfit to be the Commander in Chief”.
The rivalry between the two go as far back as 2012 when Trump announced that he would challenge President Obama’s 2012 re-election bid and launched an attack questioning where Obama was born. However, Obama came out on top of the situation, publicly responding to Trumps allegations of Obama’s birth place by not only promptly producing a birth certificate from Hawaii, but also giving a rhetorical beating at the White House Correspondents Association dinner at which Trump was in attendance.
Obama said, “No one is happier than Donald to have the birth certificate issue resolved so that he can finally get back to the issues that matter. Like did he fake the moon landing? What really happened to Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
Few weeks after the dinner, Donald Trump is reported to have announced that he would not run for President in 2012.
Some see that in many ways, Trump’s unorthodox, aggressive Presidential campaign is driven by antipathy toward Obama. An election pledge he has repeated many times over is to repeal Obama’s landmark healthcare law.
Seeking to target the two with one stone, Trump has sought to link the President to the current Democratic Presidential nominee, saying at a rally that “the last thing we need is another four years of Obama”. Trump on Twitter said that Obama “will go down as perhaps the worst President in the history of the United States”. At yet another rally, he said, “he’s not going to be there very long, thank goodness”.
Ignoring all that on Friday in Florida, President Barak Obama went the extra mile and added his voice to in the effort to get people to vote early. “We are really making this really simple for you. I am telling you right now where you can go vote after this rally,” said Obama, before announcing the address of the nearest early voting centre.
“If you are just watching on television, or you are not from around here and you are trying to figure out well where else could I vote then go to iwillvote.com and it will give you additional locations” he added.
Pix by Charnika Imbulana
