The elections fraud case and possible outcomes

Aug 08, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

Media reporting and punditry regarding the 2024 US Presidential campaign season and the beginning of the election fraud case in Guyana have aroused interest in the quite similar disputes surrounding the 2020 Presidential elections in Guyana and the USA which have resulted in the institution of election-related conspiracy charges in both jurisdictions.

In the USA, several persons were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection; and the former President faces four indictments including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. He also faces prosecution in the state of Georgia in which he and eighteen other co-defendants are alleged to have engaged in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election in Georgia.

In Guyana, the prosecution alleges that nine persons including former senior officials of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) conspired with APNU+AFC election agents to defraud the electors of Guyana by presenting false votes from the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections. The import of this case has been demonstrated by the early comments from the leaders of the three main political parties. The PPP/C Leader has accused the presiding magistrate of entertaining frivolous objections, failing to record evidence and of suppressing evidence, and suggested that the international community be invited to observe the court proceedings, which led to condemnations of his criticisms of the judicial process and possible attempt to influence its outcome and agreement on an open court.

It is clear that the election conspiracy cases in the US would not be completed before the November 2024 Presidential elections and the concern is that much of the conduct that led to the pending indictments – false claims of election fraud, attempts to substitute valid votes and prevent certification of lawful results, mass disruption, chaos and violence – may be repeated and intensified during the current election cycle. During the past week, several media outlets in the USA, election lawyers and democratic strategists have been examining the Republican Party’s nominee campaign rhetoric and strategy and have concluded that “they are not planning on the vote being counted as normal; they are not counting on the election results being tallied as normal … thereby creating chaos around the result just like 2020.”

Rolling Stone Magazine has identified at least seventy pro-Trump election conspirators currently working as county election officials in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania to prevent the certification of unfavourable results in November. According to Democratic election lawyer, Marc Elias, “I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election in November” and that Republicans are counting on not just that they can disrupt the election in big counties, they are counting on the fact that if they do not certify in several small counties, it would not be possible to certify statewide results thereby not being able to elect a President in the normal way. Rachel Maddow, MSNBC host, believes that Trump “doesn’t think he needs to win the vote to win the election; he doesn’t think he needs to win the election in order to take power.”

My principal interest in this matter is whether Rachel Maddow’s analysis about the possibility of taking power in the US without winning the election would prove to be correct and whether Guyana’s 2020 election was quod erat demonstrandum (QED). It is possible that the Guyana election fraud case could be concluded before our next election and that finally the nation, and the world, would be exposed to compelling evidence of fraud and culpability promised for so long, and the justification for voiding lawfully certified results, although the PPP/C Leader has intimated that this matter would likely end up before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

We should recall that Election Day, March 2, 2020, was largely uneventful, but after nine of the ten regions had completed the tabulation and declaration of their vote, and with the Returning Officer (RO) Region 4 on the verge of doing the same the process was disrupted by claims of incontrovertible evidence of fraud. The leaders of at least five political parties (ANUG, CG, LJP, PPP/C, TCI), publicly and vehemently, declared that many of the Statements of Poll (SOP) presented by the RO did not correspond with the SOPs in their possession and that Mingo’s reflected significant increases for APNU+AFC and corresponding decreases for the PPP/C. The magnitude of the discrepancy between the competing declarations was over 22,000 votes. Moreover, the RO’s use of a spreadsheet was condemned as a breach of trust, GECOM regulations and the law and was clear evidence of manipulation and an ”open hijack of the elections process”.

GECOM’s Command Centre, which housed the offices of the Returning Officer for Region 4, was stormed by a mob bent on preventing the tabulation and declaration of results for that region. The Commission’s staff had to flee and the Chairperson forced to barricade herself in her office until she was rescued by some international observers. They demanded transparency, credibility, accountability and fairness and their demands were backed up by an onslaught of violent street protests, attacks on security forces and burnings across the country. Buses transporting school-children were damaged and burnt and several children were injured, and schools and businesses were forced to close. The spiralling political and social upheaval and the constant threat of international sanction undoubtedly influenced many at home and abroad, including Sir Shridath Ramphal, to believe that “our sanity and survival as a nation” required support for a CARICOM-supervised National Recount against the advice of GECOM’s Legal Adviser and the State Counsel. The National Recount succeeded in producing a different result and placated the parties that had demanded it. They promised to provide justification for their actions and proof of the fraud they had resisted. The Commission of Inquiry they established failed to produce any evidence and now the state must produce that evidence or admit their deceit and that it is possible to take power without winning an election, at least in Guyana. Under these circumstances, early elections may prove to be attractive.

Sincerely,

Oscar Dolphin

• Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Oscar Dolphin, political, Presidential, Sir Shridath Ramphal