Election Violence

Since gun sales are what's been shoring up our GNP for the past thirty years, I thought to look into surmisals about the possibility of violence after the election.

Though there's a fair amount, I chose to note the opinions in this article in the July 31, 2024 Harvard Gazette.

The article references a panel discussion (link is to Youtube) convened by the Ash Center for Governance and Innovation and moderated by Erica Chenowith, academic dean for faculty engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Sarah Birch, professor of political science at King’s College, London, studies violence in emerging democracies, primarily in Africa. Author of Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order, her research suggests that "when it {violence} does happen it is not orchestrated by political elites."

Chenoweth noted an “overwhelming majority of Americans … categorically reject using violence to achieve domestic political ends under basically any circumstance,” citing poll numbers in the high 80 percent range. 

A recent poll, found that 10 percent of participants said “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” and seven percent supported the use of force “to restore Trump to the presidency.”

(In case it doesn't occur to you, that means 90% were against using force to prevent Trump from becoming president and 93% opposed the use of force to restore him to the presidency. Regardless, the majority are opposed to violence.)

Most threats, the panelists agreed, are simply designed to intimidate.

Hardy Merriman, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict concurred, "In general, there are lots of people who threaten and never enact political violence, and there are some people who enact political violence and never threaten."

This makes sense, he explained: "If you were serious, why would you tip people off with threats?”