Nevada is also the scene of an ominous contest for a role known as “Secretary of State”,which is essentially the chief elections official of any given jurisdiction. The Republican candidate in this particular race,Jim Marchant,has pushed for the banning of early voting for months and has also been a major proponent of hand-counting ballots,echoing Trump’s unfounded allegations about “rigged” voting machines as a key reason for doing so.
The level of distrust towards the election process clearly has consequences. In suburban Las Vegas,for example,the 65-year-old taxi driver who took me from the airport to my hotel told me he had no intention of voting because “Democrats had corrupted the system”.
In the rural Republican town of Pahrump,about 100 kilometres from the Las Vegas strip,a poll worker shared her fears about what might happen if enough election deniers won their contests next week. “I’m terrified,” she told me.
And only last week,we saw thebrutal attack on Paul Pelosi,the 82-year-old husband of US Speaker Nancy Pelosi,by a conspiracy-driven perpetrator who had also embraced false claims that the election was stolen.
The 42-year-old assailant,David DePape,was searching for the speaker when he broke into the Pelosi’s San Francisco house in the middle of the night and clubbed her husband with a hammer,telling police that he was planning to take Nancy Pelosi hostage and break her kneecaps if she lied to him.
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Fortunately,the Nancy Pelosi was in Washington at the time but as Obama warned voters at his rally on Tuesday night,“more people are going to get hurt” unless elected officials from all sides do more to call out the lies,dispel the conspiracy theories,and tone down the extremist rhetoric in America.
Sadly,I couldn’t agree with him more and often find myself wondering:who’s next?
See you after the midterms. It’s going to be a wild ride.
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