I am not looking forward to November. There is a Presidential election on the way in America and you don’t have to be a genius to know that we are teetering on the brink of a monumental disaster. It would be a source of great entertainment, if it weren’t so genuinely dangerous, not just for America but for the world – and especially for women.

The United States thinks of itself as the world’s greatest democracy. In fact their system is stupidly absurd and unbalanced. Fine, it isn’t a dictatorship. But that might just be the next step.

Let’s talk about the absurdity. Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton received 65,844,954 votes (48.2%), – that’s more than Barack Obama when he was elected President in 2012, by almost 400,000 votes. Her rival Donald Trump got 62,979,879 (46.1%). That gave Clinton a majority of 2.9million in the popular vote. But guess who won? It was, of course, Donald Trump.

You probably know why, but just in case…

The US Presidency is decided on the basis of what are called “electoral college” votes. Every State has a pre-determined number of these very precious ‘ballots’, adding up to an arbitrary total of 538.

But – and here’s the crux – the allocation of electoral college votes does not reflect the population, or the number of voters, in the different States. Far from it.

For example: there are 1.084million people in Montana, give or take a few; and there are 38.9million in California. In other words, the population of California is 36 times that of Montana, a State which has 4 electoral college votes. So, on a pro-rata basis, California should have 144. Instead, it has just 54. What this means is that a vote in California is worth 62.5% less than a vote in Montana.

Think about it.

Another example: New York State has 19,571,000 inhabitants; Wyoming has a population of just 584,057. So there’s 26.68 times more people in New York than in the landlocked Mountain West State. Since Wyoming has 3 electoral college votes, in theory NY should have 80. In fact it has a mere 28, this time making a vote there worth 65% less than a vote in Wyoming.

I could go on. The whole structure is weighted heavily in favour of conservative, rural areas. It makes no sense. Equally, in 48 of the States – the exceptions are Maine and Nebraska – you can win by as little 1% of less and you take all of the electoral college votes.

The effect of this weird system, and its self-evident anti-liberal bias is that – as anyone who has been watching the race to the White House closely will know – it will all come down to just seven so called “swing States” – Arizona (11 electoral college votes), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19) and Wisconsin (10). Last time out, Joe Biden won six of these seven on his way to whupping Donald Trump, and winning the Presidential election. His overall margin of victory was wide – 306 to 232 (adding up to 538).

270 electoral college votes is the magic, minimum, winning number. So, Kamala Harris can afford to drop 36 electoral college votes from Biden’s final tally, but not more. It is a tight corner to be in.

STATE CONTRACTS AND PAYOUTS

Of course, it shouldn’t be this way.

After the defeat of Hillary Clinton, a California Democrat, Senator Barbara Boxer, introduced a bill to abolish the Electoral College system. “The Electoral College,” she said, “is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society and it needs to change immediately.”

Fat chance. The bill went nowhere. With three weeks to go, all the polls suggest that the result will still come down to the finest of margins in these seven States.

If that weren’t bad enough, the crazy reality is that there is virtually no limit on the amount that can be spent on advertising and campaigning, via Political Action Committees (or PACs). This means, essentially, that any lunatic with enough money to throw at it can attempt to buy the election. Which is exactly what Elon Musk is aiming to do for Donald Trump. In addition to donating over $750million, he is offering to give a million dollars a day to people who sign a petition “in favour of free speech and the right to bear arms.”

Elon Musk. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

In North America and Europe, we tend to sneer – for good reason – at places like Russia, where the system is so rigged that elections have no meaning. We also regard their attempts at influencing elections elsewhere with contempt.

For example, they have just interfered massively in the referendum in Moldova on EU membership. In the end, the decision to apply for EU membership was carried – but only by the slimmest of margins. The bottom line is that if the Russians continue to put money into fake news, disinformation and lies about what havoc (alleged) the EU will wreak on Moldova, then the likelihood is that any attempt to push ahead with membership will spark riots and demonstrations of a kind that would be crushed viciously in Russia itself.

They are hypocrites as well as liars. Which has a rather familiar ring to it...

If you look at how the Russians interfered in the referendum, it just happens to be exactly the same model now being employed by Elon Musk in the good ol’ USA. In a clear attempt to buy ‘No’ votes, they paid people to “sign a petition.” The Moldovan authorities had to go as far as searching people at the airport to see if they were coming into Moldova with unexplained cash. Lots of them were. Money doesn’t talk, it screams and swears.

I don’t need to go into the intricacies of Musk’s money-for-signing-a-petition scheme here. Many legal and constitutional experts are in agreement that the incentives being offered are illegal. But that doesn’t matter to Musk – or to Trump. As we know, the Trump camp will try anything that might give them an edge – and then use every trick in the book, and plenty that aren’t in it, to delay any legal reckoning for as long as possible, in the hope that they’ll get over the line ahead, by hook or by crook. But more likely the latter.

The bottom line is that politics in America is totally corrupted by money – and by the access bought by the big campaign donors. Things were bad in the UK under the Tories, but this is another level of farcical.

On the surface, Elon Musk, and the other billionaires that are supporting Trump are against ‘big government’. They want the State to fuck off out of their way, so that they can maximise their profits at every turn. But in reality – in addition to wanting to be completely free of regulation and of ‘interference’ by the State – they also want State subsidies, contracts and pay-outs.

And Donald Trump will be only too willing to oblige, in the brashest, nastiest, most cynical and undemocratic way.

The stench of money is not limited to the Trump campaign. Over a billion dollars has been raised by Kamala Harris – without which she wouldn’t have a hope of competing. Her donors may be more civilised and less demanding, but they will certainly have access to those in charge of policy-making and decision-taking in a way that is extremely unhealthy for any democracy.

Here’s another absurdity. The big tech and social media platforms, and the like of Fox News, deliberately enable the spread of disinformation, lies and conspiracy theories, via advertising by the Trump campaign and other conservative agitators. That forces the Harris campaign to also spend money with those same blood-sucking vampires to counter the cesspit of mendaciousness.

They rake in the money. And then they rake it in again. And you have ask: how the hell is this allowed?

OVERTURN THE ELECTION

At this stage, the big fear is that Harris just doesn’t have enough gas in the tank to prevail – and that Trump will successfully con people into believing the ludicrous fantasy that he is capable of Making America Great Again, when all he really wants to do is Make More Money Again.

It is genuinely astonishing that anyone can imagine Trump is about anything other than his own self-aggrandisement, but almost 50% of Americans seem to. He wants the money, the power and the attention. And, like Benjamin Netanyahu, he really wants to stay out of jail – which is a powerful motivator. Netanyahu has been willing to butcher about 50,000 people to keep Israel’s wars going – just so that he can’t be hauled before the courts. Trump would do the same. But being able to give himself a Presidential pardon would be so much easier.

The man, by now, is quite clearly unhinged. He is openly taking about the revenge he intends to inflict on political opponents, or on officials who refused to help him steal the 2020 election. He has said he’d become a dictator for a day. He wants to set the National Guard or even the army on what he calls “the enemy within.” By now, he has made over 100 threats to prosecute or punish his perceived enemies.

Over a period of four years, fact-checked by the Washington Post, he has made 30,573 false or misleading statements. At recent campaign rallies, in one day he made at least 40 separate false claims. He trots out lie after lie, each one designed to play on the ignorance, the insecurities and prejudices of his audience.

Haitian immigrants are eating domestic pets. Your kid goes to school as a ‘he’ and comes home as a ‘she’ after gender reassignment – WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. The use of wind power means that people can’t watch television if there’s no wind tonight. Under the Biden administration everybody’s got to have an electric car almost immediately. In Venezuela they’re emptying their prisons into our country.

All this from a man who should be – and may well yet be – in prison himself! And again...

The prison population all over the world is down because they put them in our country. They sell tampons, with special legislation, in boys’ locker rooms. I build better walls than anyone else. Biden got a lot of money from China. More people watched my inauguration than ever before. There were 100,000 at that rally (whisper it: there were 22,000). Obama tapped my phones. They stole the election from me. We won, we won, we did win – it was a rigged election. I never met her, never touched her...

We could be here all year. But the sinister nature of what he has promised if he does win is genuinely – as Anthony Blinken would say – “concerning.” He has suggested to Christian evangelicals that if they vote for him this time, they won’t have to worry in the future because it will all “be fixed.” He has said he will toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their licenses, as retribution for coverage he doesn’t like. He will become, or act like, a dictator. He will spread poison everywhere he turns. He will be dangerous in word and deed.

In addition, he will pardon those who tried to overturn the election in 2020 by storming the Capitol Building in an attempted coup d’etat which caused six deaths. He will continue to pack the US Supreme Court with Opus Dei members and extreme right-wing Catholics and Christians, enabling them to further limit access to abortion. And he will symbolise the triumph of the worst form of misogyny. Because what does it really say about the USA that a man who was found responsible for sexual abuse (and, yes, the judge confirmed, rape) in the E. Jean Carroll case; has boasted about grabbing women by the pussy; and has sexually harassed and molested dozens of women, would be chosen as the No.1 citizen.

It boggles the mind. But it is unfolding in real time. If Donald Trump becomes the next President of the United States of America, he will represent the greatest threat to democracy and world peace since Adolf Hitler.

It may require people to hold their noses, given the Biden administration’s grotesque collusion with Netanyahu’s far right government in the killing of tens of thousands in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, but we must do everything we can to encourage every single US citizen to go out and vote for Kamala Harris. It is imperative.

Illustration: David Rooney

HIGH MORAL GROUND

There will be an election here in Ireland in November too. Compared to what’s at risk in America, the stakes are super-low. But they are real all the same. We want to ensure that racists get short shrift. That the far right is pushed back to the margins. That the drive towards equality is accelerated. That a government can be assembled that’s capable of dealing with the housing crisis. That there is a fresh emphasis, after the election, on finding a solution to homelessness. That we move towards a health system that works better for all. And so on.

That means giving as strong a hand as possible to Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit.

There will hopefully be another Hot Press in the interim where we can deal with the issues more comprehensively, but right now, it seems that Sinn Féin will struggle to have anything like the impact people would have assumed six – or even three – months ago. The truth is that their handling of the various scandals that have hit the party in recent weeks has been staggeringly inept and plain wrong in almost every respect. In fact the only thing they got right was the belated apology to the 16-year old who received unwanted and inappropriate texts from the former Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast, and more recently Senator, Niall Ó Donnghaile.

Looked at objectively, their approach was similar to that of the Catholic Church: they acted as if the institution – or the party – is more important than anything, or anyone, else. They need to be honest with themselves: they’d have been setting up camp on the high moral ground and shouting abuse at rival politicians if similar cases had erupted in any other party.

All they can do now is regroup and fast – and maybe tone down the self-righteous rhetoric from here on. For a long time, they did the State some service in keeping the far right at bay. Focussing properly on that challenge again would be a very good starting point.

I am not looking forward to November – but it will be a fascinating campaign. That much is not in doubt....