28 2GM Friday July 31 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Stocks were falling after the largest ever
US economic slump was announced,
along with weekly unemployment
claims rising by 1.4 million. Moments
later President Trump suggested that
the election be delayed.
For weeks he had been sending out
signals that he wanted to postpone the
vote on November 3, attacking postal
voting 70 times since late March and
refusing in two interviews to say that he
would accept the result.
Last night Mr Trump raised the pro-
spect of legal battles going on for
“years” after November’s election. “You
see what’s happening with so many
places... they’re a disaster,” Mr Trump
said at his White House briefing. “They
say ‘the projected winner’... I don’t
want to see that take place in a week
after November 3 or a month, or frank-
ly, with litigation and everything else
that can happen, years, or you never
even know who won the election.”
He referred to district primary elec-
tions in New York that are still in doubt
more than a month after polling day
amid legal arguments over the count-
ing of a deluge of postal votes. One can-
didate who is trailing by four per cent
has mounted a legal challenge to have
12,000 rejected votes counted, around
one in nine of ballots cast.
Mr Trump’s re-election campaign is
in trouble, with most opinion polls
showing him at least eight points
behind Joe Biden, almost certainly his
Democratic challenger, and he seems
to be casting around for ways to draw
voters’ attention away from the pan-
demic as deaths in the US top 150,000.
Final honour John Lewis, a former Democratic congressman for Georgia, an
Trump uses poll
delay to distract
from jobs crisis
United States
David Charter Washington
Shortly after Mr Trump, 74, tweeted
about possibly delaying the vote, the
death from Covid-19 was announced of
Herman Cain, one of the country’s
most recognisable black entrepreneurs
and a strong supporter of the president.
Mr Cain, 74, had been seen at Mr
Trump’s attempted comeback rally in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, sitting in the crowd
without a mask despite warnings that
the event could spread the virus. He
was admitted to hospital ten days later
and spent a month fighting for his life.
Fears have been raised about the
ability of the electoral and postal
system to cope with the rise in “mail-in”
ballots, given the impact of the virus.
These have been stoked by Mr Trump
with numerous tweets claiming that
the election would be rigged against
him, votes would be stolen and foreign
powers would intervene.
Yesterday he also tweeted: “Mail-In
Voting is already proving to be a cata-
strophic disaster. Even testing areas are
way off. The Dems talk of foreign influ-
ence in voting, but they know that Mail-
In Voting is an easy way for foreign
countries to enter the race. Even be-
yond that, there’s no accurate count!”
Election officials have said that there
is no evidence that foreign powers can
or will be able to flood the election with
false papers that are counted.
Kim Wyman, the Republican secre-
tary of state in Washington, one of the
few states with general postal voting in
all elections, told National Public
Radio: “Election officials spend a great
deal of our time building in security
measures. The idea that people could
print millions of ballots... is not going
to pass muster with an election official.
My biggest concern with this rapidramp-up to expand absentee voting or
move to a vote-by-mail model is: do
they have the time to build up that
capacity?”
Senior Republicans joined the chor-
us of objection to Mr Trump’s sugges-
tion. Mitch McConnell, the Senate
majority leader, said: “Never in the his-
tory of the country, through wars, de-
pressions and the Civil War, have we
ever not had a federally scheduled
election on time. We’ll find a way to do
that again this Nov. 3.”
John Cornyn, a senator from Texas,
put the president’s words down as a
joke, saying: “So all you guys in the
press, your heads will explode and
you’ll write about it.”
No previous US presidential election
has been delayed and congressional
elections were held during the 1918
Spanish flu pandemic.
Mr Trump made a play to win back
white voters in the suburbs by scrap-
ping measures to enable low-cost hous-
ing to be built in wealthier areas. “I am
happy to inform all of the people living
their suburban lifestyle dream that you
will no longer be bothered or financial-
ly hurt by having low income housing
built in your neighbourhood,” he tweet-
ed. “Your house prices will go up based
on the market, and crime will go down.
I have rescinded the Obama-Biden
AFFH rule. Enjoy.”
Mr Trump’s remarks referred to the
administration’s decision last week to
rescind the Affirmatively Furthering
Fair Housing Rule, which was imple-
mented by the Obama administration
as an update to the 1968 Fair Housing
Act. The rule was implemented to com-
bat racial segregation.
US falls into recession, page 33A Dutch Holocaust survivor is
demanding compensation from Ger-
many, including the repayment of
€16 million that Jews were forced to pay
for their transport to Nazi concentra-
tion camps.
Salo Muller, 84, whose parents were
killed at Auschwitz, has written to
Angela Merkel, the German chancel-
lor, and filed a legal claim against
Germany and Deutsche Bahn, the
national railway company.
Deutsche Reichsbahn, the wartime
railway authority, transported many
Jewish people to their deaths, including
102,000 Dutch Jews who were killed in
concentration camps.
The victims were often forced to pay‘Merkel must compensate
Netherlands
Bruno Waterfield Brussels
David Crossland Berlinfor the costs of their transportation in
cattle trucks in terrible conditions. The
fare was funded from the confiscation
of their property.
The fares were charged by Deutsche
Reichsbahn at the rate of four pfennigs
per kilometre for each adult, half price
for their children and the under-fours
travelled free.
“I blame the railway company for
knowingly transporting Jews to the
concentration camps and for killing
those Jews there in a terrible way,” Mr
Muller told NOS, a Dutch broadcaster.
“I want recognition from them and
recognition always comes with com-
pensation.”
In 2018 Mr Muller, a former physio-
therapist at Ajax football club, won an
apology and up to €50 million in com-
pensation from Nederlandse Spoorwe-
gen, the Dutch railway, for its role inAnalysis
P
resident Trump
has emergency
powers he can
invoke, as he did
to seize funding
for the border wall with
Mexico, but changing the
timing of the election and
transfer of power is not
one of them (David
Charter writes).
Article One of the
constitution states that
“The times, places and
manner of holding
elections for senators and
representatives, shall be
prescribed in each state
by the legislature thereof;
but the Congress may at
any time by law make or
alter such regulations”.
Congress has set a
federal law schedule that
presidential electionsoccur “on the Tuesday
next after the first
Monday in November, in
every fourth year
succeeding every election
of a president and
vice-president.”
While Congress could
delay election day on a
simple majority vote, the
handover to the next
president, in January, is
set in the constitution,
which can be amended
only by a two-thirds
majority. The 20th
Amendment to the
constitution states: “The
terms of the president
and vice-president shall
end at noon on the 20th
day of January.”
As well as election day
itself, Congress has also
set down in law when theelectoral college
convenes after the
election for the formal
process of naming the
new president, or
agreeing a second term
for an incumbent. This
year it is set for
December 14.
The president can
declare a national
emergency, citing the
National Emergencies
Act, but he can only take
emergency powers
domestically, given to
him by federal law. This
does not apply to
changing the voting
schedule.
In his tweet Mr Trump
distinguished between
absentee voting, “which
is good”, and “universal
mail-in voting”, which hesaid was wide open to
fraud. Mr Trump has
voted by absentee ballot
in New York. Twenty-
nine states allow absentee
voting to be requested
without a reason.
The small number of
states with “mail-in”
voting automatically send
out the ballot paper to all
voters. Critics say that
this increases the chances
of stolen ballots but
proven voting fraud is
rare. In the past 20 years
more than 250 million
postal votes have been
cast and according to the
conservative Heritage
Foundation there have
been 1,285 proven cases
of all types of voter fraud,
resulting in 1,100
convictions.