As any pub galah will tell you, the US presidential election may formally involve voters in 50 states but it’s really only about seven swing states whose votes will really count this time.
Which is why the gentle folk of Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada are presently living an intolerable existence; unable to stay in their homes and watch Grey’s Anatomy without encountering Harris campaign ads about bungled abortions, unable to leave lest Musk-funded droogs burst out at them from behind a shrub.
Of the more than 185 million registered voters about 40 million live in these seven states, the fidgety owner-operators of that rare American electoral asset: A vote that might actually count.
Around half of them have voted already, which is perfectly understandable given the American Psychological Association’s recent survey indicating seven in ten voters fear this election day will end in violence. A rational fear, given that’s what happened last time, and as Joseph Heller presciently noted in 1961, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.
Geographically-determined relevance deprivation syndrome is something Australians know well. Many of us who live in safe seats, or predictable states, will experience the forthcoming Australian federal election campaign as a spectator event, resigned to inhaling jet fumes from the Albanese and Dutton planes as they shuttle back and forth duchessing voters in Queensland and the West.
What might be more shocking to Australian eyes is that every single one of those seven US states employs its own method of casting and counting votes.
And every voter in every one of those states will not only be voting in a different system from the others, but they’ll be voting in a system that is different from the last time they voted.
Why? Because in the US, electoral rules aren’t set by a central independent voting authority the way they are in Australia.
A changeable, confusing set of voting rules
The question of who can vote, how they vote, and how votes are counted is, in America, a live and constantly re-prosecuted one. State by state, hand to hand, it is a thoroughly politicised process ensnaring state legislatures, governors with veto capacity, and state-based courts whose benches are themselves plump with political appointment.
If you’ve grown up thinking that Situation Normal is something like the Australian Electoral Commission — an independent electoral authority which operates our voter roll to standard and transparent rules across the country — prepare to be shocked by the Wild West that is voting in America.
Even a highlights package of these seven states reveals a changeable, confusing set of contested electoral guidelines that look like Xi Jinping’s search result from “Hey ChatGPT, design me a system to destroy America’s faith in the democratic system”.
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Every one of those swing states has changed its voting system in some way since 2020.
In Michigan — a state with a Democratic governor — early voting runs for nine days, and postal votes are issued with postage prepaid to encourage citizens to vote.
But in North Carolina, a significant tranche of new electoral laws have made it harder for citizens to vote since 2020.
This year, NC voters need to bring photo ID, and postal votes need to include an ID photocopy plus an endorsement from a notary public or two witnesses to be considered valid, plus it needs to arrive by 7pm on election day, rather than within three days of the poll as previous rules decreed.
In Nevada, every eligible voter is automatically sent a postal voting pack!
But in Arizona, there are criminal penalties for any election official sending a postal voting pack to anyone who didn’t expressly request it.
In Georgia, laws passed since 2020 allow any citizen to challenge the eligibility to vote of any other citizen, on pretty much any grounds. The laws arose from the Trump campaign’s allegations of widespread voting fraud, and have not yielded much by way of fraud detection, but the Brennan Center For Justice reports that around half a million challenges have been laid under the new laws, chewing up significant time and work for that state’s electoral authorities in the years since.
The Georgia reforms — which also restrict postal voting — have a particular impact on Black voters, who four years ago were reported to face voting queues in some areas of up to 12 hours.
The new legislation made it an offence to offer food or water to anyone in a voting queue, no matter how long the wait; this element was partially overturned last year by a federal judge, who ruled that it should only apply within 150 feet of a polling place.
All seven key states ban the wearing of campaign T-shirts into polling places. But if you’re voting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Nevada, you’re welcome to bring your gun along.
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Confused laws create confused voters
The practical effect of these constantly-changing, hotly-prosecuted rules for democracy is twofold.
It creates confused voters, of course, who are never quite sure what the rules are from cycle to cycle, or state to state.
But the global effect is much more cancerous for democracy. When electoral officials who are themselves politically partisan force through electoral reforms to benefit their own side, then the rational conclusion from the voting public is that the process in general is not to be trusted.
It’s not much of a jump from there for an election result to be ignored, or dismissed as “rigged”— a perception that is today well established, even before the result of the 2024 presidential election is known.
As Stalin once said: “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
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The Washington Post published a weekend analysis of American podcasts with significant listenership and established that 26 — including juggernauts like The Joe Rogan Experience — have in the past year broadcast material normalising the view that the election could be rigged or stolen.
Another thing it’s perfectly fine to do in American presidential elections is crank out election ads right up until the last voting booth closes. Unlike Australia, the US does not enforce a blackout pre-election, and in the last ten days, it is estimated that the parties blew US$1.3bn on desperate appeals to the shrinking pool of voters who hadn’t yet voted and remained capable of basic neural processes, if not actual enthusiasm for the idea of putting Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of vaccines and banning the fluoridation of water supplies.
Because voting is voluntary in the United States, the majority of campaign activity is not directed towards material that will expand voters’ knowledge about exactly what a presidential candidate will do on some important but dense policy area.
The big priority is to get voters off the couch and out to the polling station, and the best way to do that is make them angry or scared.
Which is why so many Harris campaign millions have gone toward ads pushing the scenario that Donald Trump will punish women personally for having an abortion, while the Trump-backing Right For America group plastered the airwaves last week with a brooding warning that all Americans were at risk from criminal, illegal immigrants; “A migrant has been charged with raping a 15-year-old disabled girl. How will your family survive another four years if you may not be able to survive the night?”
Australia decided in 1924 to adopt compulsory voting, and in 1984 to create the independent Australian Electoral Commission. Both sound like dry, administrative decisions that would cause only the nerdiest hearts to beat faster.
But they are decisions that have averted much by way of the fear, anxiety and violence that hover today over our great ally. No matter how closely you’re watching today’s US election, and even if you’re not watching it at all, it’s worth a brief but fervent vote of thanks to our forebears, who decided for us so wisely.
