US Election Integrity Fears Heighten Tension Ahead of Presidential Vote

The two major U.S. political parties are expressing concern about "election integrity" ahead of November's vote, focusing on the procedures for registering to vote; casting, counting and certifying votes; and adequately addressing any serious issues that arise.

Democrats accuse Republicans of limiting access to polling stations and plotting to hamper the certification of the results. Republicans suspect Democratic Party operatives of tampering with absentee ballots, manipulating voting machines and keeping ineligible voters on the rolls.

The Republican nominee for a third consecutive presidential election, former President Donald Trump, is facing criminal charges over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He continues to assert he was not really defeated because it was a "rigged election."

The Democratic Party's nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, accuses Trump of undermining confidence in elections, while she pledges to uphold fundamental American principles "from the rule of law to free and fair elections to the peaceful transfer of power," as she phrased it during her acceptance speech at last month's party convention in Chicago.

Federal agencies have been conducting tabletop exercises, mindful of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters, unhappy with the president's defeat, stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The most recent drill included state and local election officials along with federal agencies such as the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, as well as postal investigators.

Has the preparation strengthened election integrity?

That is the hope of stakeholders such as the 104-year-old League of Women Voters.

"We'll have to see what happens, what the outcome of the election is, how people feel about it, what protests [there are] and whether that protest crosses the line into violence, and my hope is that it doesn't," league CEO Celina Stewart told VOA.

So far this year, the system has held up well, said Ben Hovland, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent federal agency established in 2002 to help facilitate the administration of elections.

'We're in Good Shape'

"We've had a lot of primaries already, both the presidential primaries this year, the state primaries. And, so, election officials have had a lot of practice already this season, and I think we're in good shape going into November," Hovland told VOA.

The Election Assistance Commission and Federal Election Commission are the only U.S. government agencies devoted solely to campaigns and elections. The Justice Department administers and enforces some elections statutes. Most everything else is under the jurisdiction of the individual states and territories. They are tasked with a chain of responsibilities ranging from registering voters prior to elections to certifying the tallies after the elections.

Asked by VOA to assess what would concern him most if the system were put to a stress test, Hovland, a former poll worker, responded, "When I look at the challenges election administrators are facing, there are so many."

"The recent years have been more challenging than most," he said, and more government funding is needed to improve election integrity.

County clerks and other elections officials across the country are hoping for a calmer election than the one four years ago.

In Champaign County, Illinois, in 2020, the local Republican Party tried to have a judge compel the county clerk, Aaron Ammons, to stop counting mailed-in ballots.

"And he dismissed that claim, and I was able to count the ballots," Ammons said. "But they definitely tried it, just like they were trying in other places across the country."

Threats, intimidation and lawsuits have prompted many election officials and volunteers nationwide to quit, said Ammons, who was elected to his post as a Democrat in 2018.

"It does a disservice, and it really is disheartening to the people who do this work if we're not getting the support that we obviously need for being on the front lines of democracy," he told VOA.

The League of Women Voters' Stewart, who is also a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises, agrees.

"To villainize a community service and a civic duty people take on, I think, is really crazy. Even more so, there's just no evidence of any nefarious conduct," she said.

To reassure candidates, party officials and the public, it is important to invite them to watch the system operate, said Eric Fey, the director of elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.

"Opening mail ballots, tabulating ballots, testing voting equipment, manually recounting, auditing after the election — all of these things are publicly observable," said Fey, the co-host of an award-winning podcast about elections administration.

Controversy in Georgia

In Georgia, one of about seven states where Trump and Harris are virtually tied in the polls, Democrats have sued to block new election rules they warn could lead to post-election chaos. The state's election board recently authorized individual county election superintendents to delay or cancel the certification of votes.

Trump has been indicted on multiple criminal charges in Georgia for trying to overturn the state's election result in 2020 and attempting to persuade state officials to declare him the winner even though he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, who was elected president.

In Colorado, where most of the country clerks are Republican and Harris is expected to win the state's 10 electoral votes, there are indications some may withhold certification of November's results.

"Nothing has changed since the 2020 elections. The voting equipment is the same, uncertified, Chinese-built electronics with built-in internet capability," wrote Ron Hanks, the chairman of the state's Republican Party ballot and elections security committee, in a statement to last year's election canvass boards.

The rhetoric is reminiscent of partisan allegations from the 2020 presidential election when conspiracy theorists sought to discredit Biden's victory. Some claimed that voting machines had been manipulated by malevolent outside forces using Italian satellites or thermostats controlled by China — or former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013.

"Most folks do not understand the mechanics of how an election is administered. It's so decentralized, and every state is doing it a little bit differently," said Fey in Missouri. "And, no, Hugo Chavez cannot come back from the grave to a voting machine."

In most other democracies around the world, an election may involve a smaller ballot. Constituents may cast their vote for a single member of parliament and a president and answer a referendum question.

In American elections, local voters are often confronted with voluminous ballots containing dozens of candidates, a series of tax and levy bond measure and proposed state constitutional changes.

A single U.S. county may have to count as many votes as would be cast in a mid-sized country, thus it would need to rely on electronic tabulations. Counting ballots by hand is rare, usually occurring when the count is extremely close, and a recount is ordered.

Overall, the American model for elections is not an efficient one, Fey acknowledged.

"It's made to be a responsive model where the government is at a very low level, close to the citizens, and a lot of decisions are not necessarily made at the national level," he said. "So, what we lose in efficiency, we gain in response to this at the local level."