The Economist - USA (2020-08-08)

TheEconomistAugust 8th 2020 23

1

W

ith lessthan three months to go un-

til polling day, a president talking up

the threat of fraud and a virus keeping peo-

ple at home, Americans are understand-

ably worried about this year’s presidential

election. Even in more normal times,

America’s system of casting and counting

ballots is more complicated and inconve-

nient than it should be. In Georgia’s prim-

ary elections in mid-July some voters

queued for five hours to make their voices

heard. In New York, tens of thousands of

mail-in ballots have been disqualified or

are being disputed six weeks after the

primary election there.

To simplify a bit, at election time Amer-

icans now worry about three groups of bad

actors. The first is foreigners, who might

meddle with the results. “Russian election

interference” conjures-up images of hack-

ers ensconced in St Petersburg breaking

into vote-counting machines, or corrupt-

ing lists of eligible voters. But this is not

what happened in 2016. The Russian inter-

ference that became such a big post-elec-

tion story was an influence campaign rath-

er than a technologically sophisticated plot

to mess with voting returns.

The second group is fraudulent voters.

These have long preoccupied Republican

politicians. Donald Trump’s insistence

that “2020 will be the most inaccurate

and fraudulentElection in history” is

different in style and motivation, but not in

substance, from past claims. There is al-

most no evidence for this either. Mr

Trump’s own commission on election in-

tegrity, which was seemingly set up to ex-

plain how the greatest candidate in history

could possibly have lost the popular vote in

2016 (and which was run by Kris Kobach, an

enthusiastic peddler of the myth), dis-

banded without finding evidence of voting

fraud. Still, polls last time around suggest-

ed that about half of voters believe that

electoral fraud is a real problem.

The third group of “bad actors” are Re-

publicans. Democrats maintain that, by

manipulating laws on what identification

is acceptable at a polling station and where

those stations are sited, and by purging in-

active voters from the state lists of eligible

voters, Republicans engage in a systematic

kind of cheating, or voter suppression.

There is evidence that this goes on. Repub-

lican operatives will sometimes admit to it

in unguarded moments. But there is little

evidence that voter suppression is deci-

sive, perhaps because the main effect may

be to disenfranchise people who would not

have voted anyway (even in presidential

elections, about 45% of eligible voters do

not bother to cast a ballot).

Electing a president

Jarring

WASHINGTON, DC

Americans should worry less about foreigners and fraud and worry more about

creaky election infrastructure

United States

24 Thepostalservice

25 Hyperloops

25 Baseballreturns

26 HowtheDistrictgot its shape

27 CitiesandUBI

28 Lexington: One America News

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