Machetes, Bullets, and Ballot Boxes: The Violent Descent of American Elections

A Trump supporter brandishing a machete at a polling station in Florida. Ballot boxes set on fire in three separate states. Envelopes full of white powder sent to election boards. Shots fired at a Democratic party office in Arizona. And two attempts on the life of the Republican candidate.

The 2024 presidential campaign has already been marred by “unprecedented” violence, or threats of violence, against public figures and election workers, according to US officials. Law enforcement agencies are braced for civil unrest, regardless of who wins.

Instead of seeking to calm tensions, campaigners have traded ever more aggressive barbs. In recent decades “there has been nothing like this rhetoric in national elections,” said Alex Keyssar, a Harvard historian of US democracy. While “avid partisans” deployed menacing speech in previous clashes, this time “the violent rhetoric is coming from the top”, he added.

In a country whose elections were once the standard-bearer for democracies worldwide, extreme exhortations have become so commonplace as to often pass without comment.

Both sides have called their opponents fascists, and warned of a slide into authoritarianism. Some Democrats have likened Donald Trump to a modern-day Hitler. At least one Republican has suggested the country would have to resort to civil war to settle its differences if the former president loses.

Amid a rise in mass shootings, candidates boast of their defence of firearms. Even the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris felt the need to remind the public that she owned…  Read more a Glock, and was prepared to use it.