Welcome to this first weekly update ahead of the November 3 US presidential election. That is, if they still take place.
This was the week when the first drastic measures against the coronavirus were also taken in the US and the country braced itself for a long-term disruption of daily life.
That also raised the question of whether the elections can be held during a state of emergency. In addition, some Democrats fear that President Donald Trump will try to stay in power longer. Can he suspend the elections?
It could be postponed, but not postponed
Elector lawyer Hans von Spakovsky of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank was clearly opposed to it BuzzFeed News: “The President has no authority to change the date of a federal election.” That is a matter for Congress, which has legally mandated that presidential elections should take place every four years “on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.”
Congress can change that law, but it’s a complicated job. The same must then be done with the rules for the delegates (electors) who meet in December. Presidential elections cannot be delayed for more than a few months without changing the constitution. It prescribes that a president should not rule for more than four years.
How likely are elections to be postponed? “I can promise Congress won’t do that,” said Justin Levitt, chief of justice for the Justice Department under Barack Obama. “If the fear of the virus in November is so bad that you cannot hold elections in many places, then it will be just as bad on December 31.”
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A voter hands over a ballot paper to an employee of an election room in Miami, Florida. (Photo: Reuters)
States postpone primaries
You would almost forget, but the Democratic primaries are not over yet. Those that most headlines three weeks ago, are now subordinate to the COVID-19 virus.
The virus also resides on the electoral front: the states of Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland and Ohio decided to postpone their primaries for fear of the virus spreading.
Biden wins in three states
Illinois, Florida and Arizona did go to the polls last Tuesday. Early or postal voting was encouraged to limit the crowds at the polling stations. Turnout was even higher in the last two states than in 2016.
Joe Biden took the win easily in all three states and built his lead over Bernie Sanders to almost insurmountable. Voters in Florida even gave him a lead of over 39 percentage points over Sanders. There were 23 in Illinois and 11 in Arizona.
Moderate Biden was helped by demographics in the constituency of Florida: 25 percent of Democratic voters in the state are black, and 70 percent are older than 45. These are two groups in which the former vice president is doing particularly well.
In a poll from Associated Press Seven out of ten Floridians surveyed said they trust Biden most to deal with a major crisis. Let us just have presented an unparalleled crisis, in the form of the corona virus.
Bernie Sanders is nationally popular with voters of Hispanic descent, but he alienated himself from the sizable Cuban community in Florida by refusing to accept his pronunciations of admiration for aspects of the communist regime in Cuba. His criticism of Israel had the same effect on the many Jewish retirees living in Florida.
Debate without an audience and Biden goes presidential
Despite the corona crisis, the seventies Biden and Sanders nevertheless debated with each other last Sunday. That happened in an empty television studio. The two candidates greeted each other with an elbow tap and they were a long way apart. Biden delivered a surprise (which was already in line with expectations): he wants a woman as vice president.
Naturally, the corona virus was the main topic of the debate and in the days that followed, Biden and Sanders came up with plans to deal with the crisis.
The way in which Biden spoke about the corona crisis was striking. Or actually how he did not. In public, the former vice president initially kept quite plain, but in the lee he gathered a team of prominent physicians and former government officials to advise him. As commented by a president, many commentators noted, and that will undoubtedly be the message Biden’s campaign team wants to convey.
Bye-bye Tulsi
Tulsi Gabbard also participated until this week. You may have missed it, because the Hawaii delegate did not win much support or attention. So far, she had won two delegates, both from American Samoa, her hometown.
Gabbard ended her campaign on Thursday and expressed support for Biden. “Although I disagree with the Vice President on every front, I know he has a good heart and is motivated by his love for our country and the American people,” she wrote in a statement.
What will Bernie do?
His path to the party nomination is now so narrow that Bernie Sanders announced on Wednesday that he and his chief advisor (wife Jane) will be “considering his campaign” in the coming weeks.
Obviously, that announcement sparked a lot of speculation. Will Sanders step out of the race or try to use his support among young Democrats to push Biden further to the left? News website Axios worsened uncertainty by accidentally reporting that Sanders had withdrawn.
Sanders himself said in a characteristic grumpy way that he was not interested in the speculations, but is now mainly concerned with the corona virus. He bit a journalist who asked him when he will make a decision: “You have to stop this. I’m dealing with one fucking global crisis, do you understand? “
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This was your election update for this week. Do you have questions about the US presidential race, topic suggestions, or other comments? Send an email to [email protected].
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