Our democracy held - barely
Many of us are unaware of just how close America came to losing its last and most important guardrail of our democratic system — our elections. Yes, the election is over, and Joe Biden won. More than 150 million people voted. States are in the process of certifying election results according to the wishes of their voters. Judges have unceremoniously thrown out President Trump’s dubious legal claims. Responsible state and local officials have resisted demands from Trump and his allies to reject election results. Yet all of this demonstrates how fragile our election guardrails are, and how, with a few twists, this election could have gone off the rails. Let’s look at what did occur, and how those actions provide a road map for future politicians and parties to undercut elections and voters and then seize power.
1. Convince voters that the election has been stolen – The President has accomplished this in spades. According to The Hill, he has convinced 45% of the electorate and 70% of Republicans that this election was rigged, and that there was massive voter fraud. He has been aided in these efforts by GOP controlled state legislatures and Congressional leaders. GOP leaders have, with limited exceptions, enabled Trump in these lies, refusing to refute his claims. State Legislatures, including Pennsylvania, prohibited election officials from counting mail-in ballots before election day. This created a “red mirage” with Trump leading early on election night, and Democratic votes “magically” appearing in the middle of the night when if fact they were just being counted.
2. Make sure local and state officials are loyal – We were lucky in this election that most state and local election officials did their civic duty to assure a free and fair election. Many did this despite death threats and extreme pressure from Trump and his allies. These officials are to be commended. Now imagine if these same officials were Trump loyalists in States like Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona where the votes were close. The capacity to gum up the machinery of counting and validating votes could have steered those results in a different direction. Politico noted that a mere difference of 45,000 votes in those three States would have created a tie vote of 269-269 in the Electoral College. That would have sent the election into the House of Representatives where Trump would have most probably won a second term.
3. Pressure state legislatures to seize the vote — The Constitution gives the power to state legislatures to decide how electors are chosen to vote in the Electoral College. They can ignore the popular vote and simply chose their own electors. State legislatures can also designate electors if a state “fails” to produce a conclusive election result. Trump and his allies have been trying to persuade these Republican state legislatures in states that Biden won to designate Republican electors. So far these attempts have failed, but imagine if these swing state votes were even closer. A state legislature could designate electors because the state election “failed” to produce a conclusive result.
4. Appoint sympathetic judges — It has been reassuring that consistently the state courts have rejected the claims of Trump and his attorneys that the election was fraudulent and rigged. The low quality of the legal cases (presented by attorney Rudy Giuliani) and the high quality of the judges’ rulings have helped. However, the federal bench is now loaded with judges elevated by President Trump and Senator McConnell. So there is no guarantee that future rulings will fare as well. Also, we do not know how the Supreme Court might rule, particularly with regard to state legislators overriding voter decisions.
This is a cautionary tale. It would take a close election to set these actions in motion. Yet it is clear that our election system is frail and vulnerable to manipulation. There are actions we can take to prevent an election high jacking. We should require votes to be counted at the same time whether they are mailed in votes or votes completed on election day. Each state should have one set of electors, and those electors should vote for the winner of their state election.
We are a country that is divided equally from a political standpoint. Close elections are probably going to be the norm going froward. Yet we see that our election system is vulnerable to manipulation by actors more concerned with gaining and retaining power than by preserving democracy. Our democracy held this time. The question is: Will it hold the next time?
R. Tom Deloe is a Cumberland Township resident.