That more than 42 million Americans have cast early ballots ahead of today’s midterm elections, compared to the numbers in 2018, suggests that voters in that country are regarding this poll as extremely crucial.

In fact, news reports out of the US have stated that the last time the issues at stake in an American election were this serious was after Mr Abraham Lincoln’s election to office in 1860 — which resulted in 11 states seceding, leading to the infamous civil war in which more than 600,000 lives were lost.

That, of course, was a dark chapter in American history which, we expect, won’t be repeated. However, it is clear that the US enters this election highly polarised in an atmosphere pregnant with voter intimidation, fear fuelled by xenophobia, manufactured mistrust of the electoral system, and deep worry about the future of democracy.

A lot of that discord has been stoked by former Republican President Donald Trump who, even before his loss to Democrat Joseph Biden in the 2020 presidential election, had started sowing the seeds of suspicion by claiming that electoral fraud would have been the only way to get him out of office.

Since then he has continued to repeat his baseless claims, despite the courts throwing out his petitions.

Now we are seeing where many of his ardent supporters have secured positions as so-called election watchers as they maintain his false narrative.

Yesterday, wire service reports told us that Republican lawmakers have lodged technical objections to early voting in several states where the elections could be close.

“In Pennsylvania, for example, the state Supreme Court has ruled that mail-in votes cannot be counted if they do not bear a written date on the envelope — a decision that could potentially affect thousands of ballots,” Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

Additionally, AFP reported that, in Wisconsin, absentee votes can be thrown out if the address of the witness — whom the state requires to watch a ballot envelope being sealed — is incomplete.

Last week, Mr Trump alleged that “unverified” ballots had been mailed to voters in the key state of Pennsylvania. However, that claim has been debunked by state elections officials.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported Professor Edward Foley, who directs Ohio State University’s election law programme, as saying that the midterm vote is “hugely consequential” as it will answer the question of the state of American democracy and how that country is doing with its collective self-governance.

He is, of course, correct, as there are a number of important issues facing the American people, among them inflation, crime, immigration, and abortion, an always emotive issue which has seen passions further inflamed by the US Supreme Court’s decision taking away a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy and leaving the matter for individual states to determine.

Our interest in the election, of course, is driven not only by our appetite for political developments in a country with which Jamaica has enjoyed fruitful relations over many decades, but also the fact that many Jamaicans live and work in the United States. As such, they will be affected by the results.

Outside of that, though, we share Professor Foley’s analysis that the election turns on whether the US can “build the system and produce accurate, honest outcomes, and will enough people believe them”