Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020 by Lawrence Douglas

Author:Lawrence Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2020-05-18T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Catastrophe No. 2

Hack Attack

Our second crisis scenario turns our attention from Pennsylvania to another swing state, Michigan. It is November 3, and voter turnout is heavy statewide. Only something is very wrong in Detroit. Twenty minutes after polls open at 7:00 a.m. EST, Detroit is hit by a massive power failure, knocking out electricity to almost all of the city’s 673,000 residents.1 Utility workers at Detroit Energy struggle to identify the source of the problem. It is not until 2:00 p.m. that power is restored to some locations, but rolling blackouts continue to plague much of the city.

In those areas where power is restored, a fresh problem emerges. Widespread computer glitches prevent election officials from accessing lists of registered voters. As we shall see in the next chapter, provisional ballots may be used in such circumstances, but many polling stations find themselves lacking such ballots, and officials at those that have them haven’t been properly trained to deal with the magnitude of the problem. When polls close at 8:00 p.m., polling stations throughout the city remain either without power or unable to access voting rolls.

At midnight and notwithstanding the reports of the mess coming from Detroit, major networks announce Trump’s reelection. The final result is extremely close—in fact, Michigan’s sixteen electoral votes account for Trump’s winning margin of 280 to Biden’s 265. As in 2016, Trump’s victory in Michigan is narrow; around thirty thousand votes separate the two candidates. But has he in fact carried Michigan?

It is not until 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 4, that Detroit Energy succeeds at restoring power to all locations in the city—and later that morning, election officials estimate that as a result of the disruptions, as many as 350,000 people in Detroit and outlying areas were prevented from casting their ballots. That number would appear to be pivotal. In 2016, 750,000 Americans voted in Michigan’s Wayne County, which includes Detroit, with Hillary Clinton trouncing Trump there by close to 300,000 votes (520,000 votes to 230,000).2 Now, in 2020, with the depletion caused by the power outage and computer glitches, Wayne County accounts for only 400,000 of the votes cast in Michigan.

At a noon press conference in front of city hall, Detroit mayor Mike Duggan acknowledges that the cause of the multiple failures remains unclear. “We’re looking into anything and everything—including the possibility that our electrical grid and registration databases were hacked by a foreign adversary for the express purpose of disrupting voting in our city. But whatever the cause, it’s clear that in the interests of a fair election we must and will conduct a revote in Wayne County.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.