Divisions in the United States have never been more pronounced ahead of the 2024 US presidential election.
Incumbent Joe Biden is likely to face Donald Trump in a rematch of the 2024 election, despite the fact the majority of Americans do not want to see this, but what the average person wants matters little.
In 2022, Canadian novelist and cultural commentator Stephen Marche looked at the increasing polarisation in American life and politics, and outlined five scenarios that could spark a new civil war in the States, in his book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future.
Mr Marche interviewed military officials, law enforcement, people involved in right wing militias, food supply experts, historians and political scientists to research the book, and the five scenarios 'or dispatches' are all striking in how easily they could materialise.
His new book, The Last Election, is fiction, but it is very much inspired by real life and his fears over an electoral collapse that could follow the next US presidential election.
Mr Marche co-wrote the book with Andrew Yang, an American businessman, attorney, lobbyist, and politician. Mr Yang was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
The book follows Mikey Ricci, a political operative who has lost faith in traditional structures following the bitter races of 2016 and 2020; and Martha Kass, the anonymous tip supervisor of The New York Times.
Without spoiling the plot, it looks at what could happen in the event of a collapse of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the US president. Bigger states get more votes in the college, so the winner of the popular vote doesn't necessarily end up in the White House, which is what happened in 2016 when Mr Trump defeated Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote.
A contingent election is the process put in place to deal with the eventuality in which no presidential candidate reaches the threshold of 270 votes in the Electoral College.
Mr Marche feels this is a distinct possibility, despite the fact it last occurred in 1825, and with the potential for violence and unrest with unprecedented election denial in the US, it could easily turn ugly.
Speaking after the release of his new book, Mr Marche told BreakingNews.ie: "In the Next Civil War I didn’t have a chapter on what a breakdown in the electoral system would look like.
"In 2018 and 2019, when I was writing that book, it didn’t seem like a reasonable possibility. With The Next Civil War, I wanted to base it all on the best available models, but because American politics is so toxic, you can’t really ask people their opinions on it.
"Andrew Yang called and asked if I wanted to do this book, and with him I could get the most accurate information available about how a campaign works.
"When he came to me there were two conditions I had. One was ‘you need to call me back right away’. He has important things to do, but if I was going to do this, I wanted to be able to call and get an answer right away. The other was ‘I want the truth, and I want everyone on your staff to tell me the truth'.
"That way, whatever happened, I would get this sort of unprecedented education in how American electoral politics works. That’s exactly what I got."
He added: "I became obsessed with the details of how this works. There’s an ex-Broadway actor hired by many American politicians on both sides to teach them how to act like ordinary human beings. I asked one staff member ‘what’s sex like on a campaign trail?’ That was one of my earliest questions, because we were writing a thriller I needed to know, and he said: ‘It’s like summer camp. But it doesn’t really matter, you’re in a mixture of oxytocin and adrenaline’.
"Those were the funny things, but there were also things like having opposition research explained to me, having dark money explained to me in depth, the technical information about how it works.
"Anyone who has read The Next Civil War will know I wasn’t particularly optimistic before, but after talking to these people I thought ‘it’s so much more f***ed up than I thought’."
While the new book is fiction, Mr Marche thinks a contingent election is just as likely as any of the models he outlined in The Next Civil War, which included states breaking away from the US, an assassination of a sitting president, and a climate catastrophe in New York, amongst other chilling scenarios.
"Contingent vote? I think it’s not implausible at all. This is obviously a thriller, unlike the scenarios in The Next Civil War, but on the other hand, I think it’s every bit as plausible as anything in that book. It’s very much based on mine and Andrew’s reading of the state of the electoral system. There are an unprecedented number of election deniers in office, you have people for whom the will of the American voter is not sacred, and when you look at the Electoral College in depth it’s just chilling.
"It’s a primitive system built for an 18th century agrarian society being applied to the most advanced economy in history. In the 21st century, it’s ripe for breakdown.
"The deep crisis in American politics is that they worship their constitution. Obviously, it is a work of great genius, but it’s a work of 18th century genius. Ultimately, it’s an antique not a way to run a society.
America has not had its fill of violence, far from it.
"Even when I was a kid, America was considered a much saner country than even Canada and Ireland. Ireland has emerged from violence, has had its fill. America has not had its fill of violence, far from it.
"America is entering a period where its government is not about policy. Last week, one poll found 70 per cent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen. In 2016, I was at the inauguration and I saw progressive people shouting ‘not my president’, because Trump did not win the popular vote.
"We’re already in a period where the legitimacy of elections is not believed. In 2024, let’s say there is a scenario where 95 per cent of Americans believe the election went correctly, and whoever wins is legitimate. That scenario is very hard to imagine."
The US military is one of the main politically independent institutions in the country. However, there have been increasing attempts to politicise it in recent years.
Mr Trump infamously looked to deploy the military amid Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd by police officers.
He also discussed using it in his attempts to stay in office after the 2020 election.
Mr Marche said this is a real worry, and it is one plot line in the new book.
"When the only institution with bipartisan support that people largely trust is the military... that puts the military in an ugly position that they do not want to be in.
"For them to be the ones people are looking to over who is the legitimate winner of an election is the worst thing for them, for the country and for everyone.
"I think some people say I imagined the Joint Chiefs of Staff plotting the overthrow of the United States. That’s not how I see it at all. What I think happens is America crumbles and the military has to intervene at some point and make a decision on how it is going to interpret the constitution, because the Supreme Court won’t do it, the political class is in chaos. My answer would be when the military has the role it currently has in the US as the last institution that people have trust in, that’s already a nightmare.
"To be clear, I believe in the US military, but they may be put in a position where they have no choice."
With the main characters being from the worlds of journalism and politics, Mr Marche said himself and Mr Yang put a lot of themselves into the book.
"I felt like if Andrew was going to have the guts to show the dirty laundry of the political class, I wanted to do a very accurate portrait of a journalist. Both these characters are good people, they are patriots who are dedicated to the truth. One thing that this collapse in America shows is that people are put in impossible positions, their choices are between bad choices and worse choices.
"The choice of a political operative today is how he/she is going to deal with dark money. There is no option of not dealing with dark money.
"Similarly, I think a journalist is faced with the institutional constraints of a major newspaper, or alternative media, with all of its insanity and total disregard for the truth and responsibility."
He added: "Partisanship in America has taken over fast food, sports teams. It’s infiltrated every aspect of life and, of course, journalism to an extent.
"I’m troubled by states openly bragging about how they are going to defy the federal government. That includes left-wing states like California openly talking about defying a Trump government and that’s how things get really dangerous, really quickly.
"Some white supremacist goes into a Walmart and murders 18 immigrants. That spreads, it becomes viral and has political consequences in the country, in a way that’s already happening.
"I’m kind of surprised about how little the massive prison sentences for some of the people involved in January 6th have really calmed the situation at all. You would think it would lead to diminished numbers of people going to rallies and things like that, but it really hasn’t. They are still in fantasy land."
While it is impossible to predict the future, Mr Marche feels the US is heading towards its final election as the country has known democracy to work before, something he feels has been happening since the contested George Bush v Al Gore election in 2000.
"The question is how much more broken will it get in the next year? Will it look like the last election in 2024, 2028, or outside chance 2032?
"Things just keep getting worse. I’m not optimistic.
"Before 2000, you had popular votes that were clear and reflected in the Electoral College. After 2000, there were very close elections where it was kind of like 'well, the Electoral College kind of disrupted the popular vote, but that's the way the system works'.
"Then you had more where there were quite radical differences between the Electoral College and the popular vote. In 2020, there was the muddying of the Electoral College water.
"In 2024, we're going into an election where the idea that the Electoral College is a repository for truth is not a given from the beginning.
"In the event of a contingent or contested election, you would have half of the country feel their rights and votes have been taken away from them, and we're talking about Americans. People who will not put up with that and also have a propensity for violence that is quite extraordinary. One of their defining national traits is that they are quite violent. They're armed to the teeth, beyond belief really. That is a situation of chaos.
"One thing I feel confident in is that a prediction of chaos is quite rational. I think the last two elections have been the last elections of a certain type. The connection between the popular vote and Electoral College has crumbled, faith in the Electoral College has rotted."
