close

OP-ED: Trump’s baseless attacks on voting have weakened faith in our democracy

6 min read

Notice: Undefined variable: article_ad_placement3 in /usr/web/cs-washington.ogdennews.com/wp-content/themes/News_Core_2023_WashCluster/single.php on line 128

Making the peaceful transfer of power a regular occurrence has been one of America’s greatest achievements.

Prior to the founding of the United States, most societies transferred power when a ruler died, and it was often not peaceful. One of the benefits of hereditary monarchies was the transition was simplified. While a peaceful transition of power is relatively easy when the successor has the same goals, the challenge comes when power is transferred to a political enemy.

George Washington was our first president, elected essentially by acclamation. He was admired and respected by almost everyone for his leadership during the American Revolution. One of his greatest achievements was what he didn’t do – he did not try to stay in power, even though he could have, and some would have liked to have seen him become an American king.

Unfortunately, President Trump is no George Washington.

When political parties were first developing in the United States, people with increasingly different visions for America began to coalesce around two members of Washington’s cabinet: John Adams, his vice president; and Thomas Jefferson, his secretary of state. Adams was a Federalist and Jefferson was an Anti-Federalist, and the party became known as the Democratic Republicans, and eventually just the Democratic Party. While Washington claimed no party affiliation, he was much closer politically to the Federalists. Adams ran as his successor and beat Jefferson in a close election in 1796.

In a hint that the U.S. Constitution was not perfect, Jefferson was elected as his vice president. Having a political rival inherit the top spot if it becomes vacant created a perverse incentive that indicated a design flaw. The problem was that the Constitution said that the person with the most electoral votes would be president, while the person who came in second would be vice president.

There have been many close and contested presidential elections in our history. In 1800, when the aforementioned design flaw produced a tie between Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the Federalists tried to deny Jefferson the presidency, but failed on the 36{sup}th{/sup} vote in the U.S. House of Representatives when James Bayard, a Federalist from Delaware, abstained instead of voting with his party. The 12{sup}th{/sup} Amendment, adopted in 1804, provided for the separate election of the president and vice president, which corrected this problem.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won a plurality of the vote, but Congress picked his opponent, John Quincy Adams, to become president, allegedly due to a “corrupt bargain” between Adams and Henry Clay, a former speaker of the House and a competing presidential candidate. Fifty-two years later, in 1876, when three states with Reconstruction governments were challenged by white Democrats reasserting their power, Congress created a compromise in which the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was given the presidency in return for ending Reconstruction, even though Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote. This solved the immediate problem, but condemned African Americans in the South to almost 100 years of oppression.

The most highly contested presidential election was in 2000, when Democrat Al Gore lost to Republican George W. Bush by a 537-vote margin in Florida. Gore clearly won the popular vote, and he probably should have been declared the winner in Florida, but the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and stopped the recount there with Bush in the lead. After the court’s decision, Gore graciously conceded to Bush, defusing a constitutional crisis.

In contrast, President Trump has been trying to create a constitutional crisis in an election in which the winner is clear.

There have been a number of contested elections that have exposed the flaws in our system, but never has a presidential candidate who lost an election refused to concede. Trump’s refusal has broken with tradition, but this is consistent with his personal history of never acknowledging mistakes or losses. While breaking traditions can be liberating or necessary for progress, many traditions have value and are traditions for a reason. As a theoretically conservative party, Republicans should know that, but their allegiance to Trump has made them forget their principles.

Our democratic system of government relies on citizens having faith in that system, and the president’s baseless criticisms of it have weakened that faith. Ironically, when Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offered a million-dollar reward for evidence of voter fraud, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, provided a case, but it was a lone man who voted for Trump with the absentee ballot of his dead mother, which I don’t think is the type of fraud Patrick was hoping to find.

Some fraud will always exist, but only massive fraud would change a presidential election. Local elections in which few people vote are the most susceptible to fraud.

It is appalling how Republican elected officials, with few exceptions, have refused to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the Senate, modeled this behavior when he asserted that, “President Trump is 100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options,” a cowardly line echoed by most elected Republicans. No one is suggesting that allegations of fraud should not be investigated, but it has been clear for some time that there is no possibility of enough fraud to keep Trump in office, and pretending otherwise is causing real damage. Polls show that as many as 75% of Republicans think Biden benefited from election fraud, and about half think Trump actually won the election.

This lack of faith in political institutions can spread to other realms. As vaccines are coming to market that may help us beat the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the same people who claim the political system is rigged don’t trust the vaccine and are saying they will refuse to get one. If a large number of people refuse to get a vaccine, the pandemic will continue.

It is hard to criticize members of your own party, but Republican officials need to demonstrate at least a minimal level of courage and rightfully acknowledge Biden as the president-elect, and stop cowering before Trump and his base. The stakes are too high for them to acquiesce with their silence.

Kent James is an East Washington resident and has degrees in history and policy management from Carnegie Mellon University. He is an adjunct professor of history at Washington & Jefferson College.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today