WashingtonDonald Trump has assured while voting in Florida that “there will be no violence” if he loses. In downtown Washington, in the neighborhood where the White House and the Capitol are located, however, bars and shops have been shielded with wooden boards for fear of possible incidents. On the way out of Powell Elementary School, one of the 75 polling stations that have been activated in the capital, Yasmine Radhi is worried about what might happen this Tuesday. “It’s very easy for two armed lunatics to do a lot of damage, no matter how many police are there,” he laments. Radhi has voted for Kamala Harris in an election of maximum uncertainty in which the count is expected to be long.
Americans are facing the next few hours with a shrinking heart, not only because the latest polls continued to show a very tight battle between the Democrats and the Republicans, but also because of the fear of an outbreak of violence. Trump assuring that there will be no violence is the crystallization of how the polarization of American society has increased in the last four years. “I think we will get a great victory,” said the Republican on Tuesday. Another not-so-reassuring comment in the face of Democrats’ fears that Trump could declare himself the winner before the count is over. Harris, who voted early, declared this Tuesday morning in a radio interview that he saw the elections as “a turning point” between “two very different visions of the future” of the country.
The Democrat’s campaign team “clearly expects” Trump to be declared the winner before all the votes have been counted, and say they have lawyers ready across the country to fight the Republican party’s legal maneuvers. The Democrats’ legal team is nearly 10 times larger than it was four years ago, amid expectations that Republicans will also try to challenge the vote counts. This could further extend the waiting time until we know which of the two candidates will occupy the Oval Office. In the last elections the result depended on 78,000 and 44,000 votes, respectively, and everything points to the scenario being repeated again.
United States Elections 2024 Map
More than half of registered voters, some 82 million people, have cast their vote in advance. Only the votes of a handful of states will decide who sits in the Oval Office: Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada. While Michigan and North Carolina are expected to have a faster count, it’s already a given that Pennsylvania, the most decisive of all, won’t be finished until after election night. On the eve of the election, both Harris and Trump took care to visit this state that will distribute 19 delegates of the 270 they need to win. Pennsylvania, along with Nevada, are two of the territories where polls projected a technical tie between Harris and Trump.
Harris, who held his last campaign event in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) on Monday, then again insisted on his message of unity in the face of fear instigated by Trump, who speaks of the existence of an “enemy within” and has fueled conspiracy theories about possible fraud. “Even if Harris wins, I don’t have the feeling that all this polarization has to end. The damage that Trump has done by sowing distrust towards democracy will take generations to fix,” Radhi also lamented. She and her husband plan to go to the event organized by Democrats to follow the count, but will leave the children with their grandparents for fear of an attack on the streets of the city.
Alguns incidents
Despite the fact that the polling stations have not yet closed, the authorities have had to intervene in several parts of the country. In Washington, Capitol Police arrested a man who smelled of fuel and was carrying a flare gun and a torch at the Visitor Center. In Michigan, a 25-year-old man has been arrested for threatening to commit a violent attack if Trump wins the election. In the key state of Georgia, two polling stations have been evacuated due to bomb threats. The FBI said the threats originated from email domains based in Russia.
Domestic violence is not the only threat hanging over the American elections. US intelligence has long expected Moscow to try to influence the presidential election. Especially after the suspicions that arose around the victory of Donald Trump in 2016.
Americans’ vote will not only impact their lives, but the rest of the world as well. Everyone anxiously awaits the final scenario: that of the first black woman president of the United States or that of the first convict turned leader of one of the world’s major powers.
