Immigrants on Reconnek fear the outcome of the upcoming US elections.
For months now, Trump and his campaign surrogates have questioned the integrity of the upcoming elections. The President has encouraged voters to vote twice to test the system (it is crime to vote twice), he has claimed that foreign countries will print mail-in ballots to rig the election and called on his supporters to go to the polls and watch out for “thieving and stealing” on Election Day — and that’s only a partial list. His claims about the vulnerabilities in the US voting process have little grounding in reality, as CNN’s fact checkers have repeatedly pointed out. But observers with experience in challenging elections abroad say the rhetoric itself is dangerous.
Dren Nupen, a South African election expert has organized national and party elections throughout Southern Africa for decades and worked with a team preparing South Africans for their historic 1994 ballot. “(Trump) is planting the seed in the mind of voters that this thing is not going to be fair. His ammunition is basically the voters. If he loses, then he can say that he knew there were issues with the vote and can mobilize them,” Nupen said. Nupen cites Zimbabwe’s 2008 presidential election, where Mugabe allegedly used the military to lead some attacks after election results, an intervention that appears inconceivable in the US — but the hyper-partisan atmosphere in America remains a cause for considerable concern.
2020 is the year where the unlikely, even the unthinkable, can happen. And immigrants on Reconnek in the US fear the outcome of the upcoming US elections as there are significant warning signs. With a pandemic shifting the nature of balloting and US President Trump and his surrogates relentlessly prejudging the result, questioning the fairness of the polls without evidence and rallying his hardcore base, immigrants on Reconnek worry that a protracted poll could lead to a constitutional crisis and even violence. On Reconnek, immigrants are preparing themselves for any eventualities after the declaration of the results but their fear is not making them to back off. They are still ready to change America’s narrative no matter what.
