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Trump himself was inciting violence, “pouring gasoline on the fire.” As for Biden, he said, “I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right.”

Political commentators noted that in 1968, Richard Nixon had won the presidency by promising, as Trump was doing now, to restore “law and order.” But one important difference was that Nixon had not yet been president, so he could logically blame the turmoil of 1968 on eight years of Democratic rule. Not so for Donald Trump, Joe Biden reminded voters in a speech in Pittsburgh on August 31. “He keeps telling us if he was president you’d feel safe,” Biden remarked dryly. “Well, he is president, whether he knows it or not.”

During the conventions and for weeks afterward, Black Lives Matter protest marches continued. The vast majority of these protests were peaceful, but the media emphasized any incidents of vandalism, looting, or violent clashes with counter-protesters or the police. Americans’ support for the demonstrators dropped off. Two protesters were killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin, allegedly by an illegally armed militia member, and a far-right demonstrator was shot and killed in Portland, Oregon. The alleged shooter in Portland was hunted down and killed by federal marshals.

Although the presidential election always gets the most national attention, both the Republican and the Democratic Parties were especially concerned about the Senate races this year. What if Joe Biden won the presidency, but the Republicans kept their majority in the Senate? They could make it very difficult for the Biden administration to achieve its goals, just as they had during President Obama’s second term.

On the other hand, what if President Trump was reelected but the Democrats won the majority in the Senate and kept their majority in the House of Representatives? If their majorities were large enough, they would have the chance to enact the laws they favored. Although the president has the power to veto a bill passed by Congress, a two-thirds majority in Congress can override a veto. And a majority-Democratic Congress might even decide to impeach and try President Trump again.

In the last weeks of the presidential race of 2020, Americans grew more and more anxious. They were worried about the nation’s racial problems. They were worried about the ongoing pandemic, which had claimed two hundred thousand American lives as of September 22.

Large numbers of Americans were worried about losing their jobs, or even about getting enough help to pay their rent and feed their families. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, thirty-five million Americans, including ten million children, had not had enough to eat. Now millions more joined the long lines at overwhelmed food banks.

On top of these anxieties, many Americans also worried that the election would not be decided fairly. US intelligence officials announced that Russia was trying to influence American voters, as they had in 2016, this time by spreading misinformation about Biden. Also, more voters than ever planned to mail in their ballots, rather than vote at a polling place, because they were afraid of catching the deadly COVID-19 virus. But Trump’s postmaster general was cutting back on mail services and removing mail drop boxes from neighborhoods. And President Trump warned over and over, against all the evidence, that voting by mail was open to fraud.

Joe Biden was prepared to fight back for a fair election. He had assembled a team of hundreds of lawyers to see to it that the election was conducted and decided according to law. They would monitor each state, especially the battleground states, to watch how votes were cast and counted. They would make sure that people knew how to vote, and that all citizens entitled to vote had the chance to do so. They would also be on the watch for foreign interference in the election.

Meanwhile, Democrats were also concerned about a longer-term threat: an inaccurate count of the national census. Every ten years, the US Census Bureau is required by the Constitution to count the total number of people residing in each state. In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau had begun door-to-door collection of information later than usual. And now the Trump administration announced it was ending the census a month early.

Each once-in-a-decade census count is important, because the population of each state determines the number of congressmen or congresswomen that state sends to the House of Representatives. The count also determines the number of electors who vote in the Electoral College to choose the president. And the federal government uses the census information to decide how much money to send each state for needs such as health clinics, schools, and highways.

But in 2020, because so many Americans had fallen into poverty and even homelessness during the pandemic, it was more difficult for the census to reach them. And for fear of deportation, many families with undocumented immigrants avoided giving the government any information. Democrats accused the Trump administration of deliberately undercounting these people, who tended to vote Democratic.

As the campaign neared its end, Donald Trump threw out one unsupported claim after another. He implied several times that Biden was taking performance-enhancing drugs for his public appearances. On September 16 he announced that his “Operation Warp Speed” project to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 would produce a vaccine and distribute it to all Americans “in a matter of weeks.” Medical experts, however, agreed that this schedule was not possible. Even if a safe and effective vaccine were available by the end of 2020, it would take several months to distribute it to the whole population.

Most alarming of all, President Trump seemed to be signaling that he would not accept defeat, even if Biden won the election. At the opening of the Republican Convention, Trump had declared, “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.” At a rally in Nevada on September 12, Trump opened his speech with, “I am going to start by saying that the Democrats