Officials, voters brace for possible violence after US election
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Americans are bracing for potential violence and unrest if Donald Trump doesn’t win the election, as the former president amplifies claims of voter fraud and lays the groundwork to challenge the outcome if Vice President Kamala Harris defeats him.
In Pennsylvania, Trump supporters echoed his view that the only way he could lose was if Democrats cheated. One marine veteran told this masthead: “If they rig another one, 30 million mother f---ers like me are gonna burn this country down. We’re coming headhunting.”
Donald Trump is reflected in the bullet-proof glass as he finishes speaking at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, two days before the election.Credit: AP
In Georgia, chief election officials will spend election night in a secure location as they oversee the counting, while in Arizona, precautions include combat training and active-shooter drills for poll workers.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, one resident said she deliberately voted early because she was afraid of election day violence.
“This country is so divided right now, it’s absolutely awful,” said Tiffany Koehler, a Republican who is voting for Harris this year.
Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, two days before the election.Credit: AP
“I’ve even told people: ‘Hey, let’s talk about the election after the election because I just really want to save our friendship’.”
With one day left in the campaign, nervousness and anxiety gripped the US as both candidates criss-crossed the country amid polls showing the race remained extremely tight.
Trump began the day with a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where he embarked on a lengthy tirade against pollsters, the media and election integrity.
“It’s a crooked country and we’re gonna make it straight,” he said. “Think of it: they cheat at elections and you call ’em on it, and they want to put you in jail.”
Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Atrium Health Amphitheatre in Macron, Georgia.Credit: AP
Harris, meanwhile, began her day with a Sunday service at a black church in Detroit, the largest city in the critical battleground state of Michigan, where she cited scripture and talked about her upbringing and going to church in Oakland, California.
Later, in a bid to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population, she vowed to do “everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and end the suffering in Gaza”.
Speaking to reporters after the church service, Harris urged voters not to fall for Trump’s strategy of sowing doubt about the election, and accused him of trying to mislead people into thinking the system was rigged against him.
“So here we are on the Sunday before the election and I would ask, in particular, people who have not yet voted to not fall for his tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won’t matter, or suggesting to people that somehow the integrity of our voting system is not intact, so that they don’t vote,” Harris said.
“And again, I think that it is a tactic. It is meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.”
Four years after losing the White House to President Joe Biden, Trump continues to claim the election was rigged, and polls have shown that about 30 per cent of Americans agree with him.
Among them is property manager Jimmy (who did not wish to give his surname) – the marine veteran who warned of potential violence if the election was “rigged again”.
US marine veteran Jimmy, who didn’t want to give his surname, is expecting trouble if Donald Trump doesn’t win.Credit: Farrah Tomazin
Wearing military dog tags and a T-shirt with the name of his business – “The Deplorable Bastards Property Maintenance Specialists” – Jimmy said he was a US marine “raised to love my country, love God and obey all laws”.
“But this Democrat liberal party has distorted everything that is honourable about our country,” he said, citing messages the Trump campaign have been aggressively pushing, such as “boys in girls’ locker rooms; transgender surgeries; flooding the borders with illegal immigrants”.
Asked if he believed Harris could win, he replied: “No. She has no shot in hell of winning. They’re gonna cheat again.”
Another Trump supporter, David Scully, shared a similar view. “I think there will be discontent,” he said in Aston, where Trump’s vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, was campaigning with Trump’s son Donald Jr.
“But I think it might [depend on] where or when or how the votes went. I might also be mad at Trump and the team for not winning, or not having a better campaign.”
This year’s presidential election will be the first since the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Authorities are less fearful of a repeat attack on the Capitol – Washington, DC, already looks like a fortress – but they worry about radicalised lone wolves targeting polling centres or officials.
“What I am concerned about is mentally unstable human beings who think they’re saving America because he or she said, ‘These people are evil and I have to stop them’,” Georgia election official Gabe Sterling told this masthead this month.
“We can get the organised groups … The FBI does a great job with that. But the individual radicalised person is next to impossible to stop, and that’s my bigger fear overall.”
Some signs of election-related violence have already emerged: last week, hundreds of ballots were either destroyed or damaged in arson attacks on two ballot drop boxes in Washington state and Oregon.
The fires followed a US Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning in September that “some social media users are discussing and encouraging various methods of sabotaging ballot drop boxes and avoiding detection, likely heightening the potential for targeting of this election infrastructure through the 2024 election cycle”.
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