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What do you do when the thief's position is to "stop the steal"? ("We need to watch the vote. We need to guard the vote. We need to stop the steal.") Yes, of course, I'm thinking about "our" former president. You know, the 78-year-old guy who's been mocking his 81-year-old adversary in the 2024 election campaign as "cognitively impaired" and insisting that President Biden "should take a cognitive test like I did." Of course, having said that, Donald Trump promptly called the White House doctor who gave him that cognitive test he "aced" Ronny Johnson, instead of Ronny Jackson.
Yes, it's true -- and I say this as a nearly 80-year-old myself -- that anyone of any age could do that, but Donald Trump is anything but anyone of any age. We're talking, after all, about the guy who more than once confused Joe Biden and Barack Obama, not to speak of his Republican opponent in the primaries, Nikki Haley, and former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (only to claim that he was being "sarcastic"). Of course, it's true that President Biden has had his own slips and mix-ups, but unlike You Know Who, he hasn't preemptively refused to accept an election loss in 2024. I'm thinking about the candidate who said of the coming election (in the context of his previous loss): "I don't believe they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time. I don't think they'll be able to get away with it," even as he indicated that the country might face a "bloodbath" if he doesn't end up back in the Oval Office.
It could face a bloodbath even if he does. In fact, count on one thing, whoever wins this year, those bump stocks that Trump's Supreme Court approved will only make the all-American future unimaginably bloodier. And one thing is painfully clear, as TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, and Julian Zelizer, who have co-edited the soon-to-be-published book Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue, suggest today, our democracy is on the edge of" well, who knows quite what? But let the two of them explore the subject. Tom
An Election in Danger?
The Fragile State of American Democracy
By Julian Zelizer and Karen J. Greenberg
Officials and election experts are now struggling in a big-time way. How, they wonder, can they effectively address mounting threats -- of violence, election denialism, foreign influence, and voter discrimination? Do they run the risk of alarming the public to the point of reducing voter turnout? Are there reasons to assuage fears about either election disinformation or possible election interference in 2024? Standing in Pointe du Hoc, France, to mark the anniversary of D-Day, President Biden told the world that those who fought in that pivotal battle are "asking us to do our job: to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy." Election security would be a good place to start.
Perhaps one way to assess the question of election stability and security in 2024 is to ask: How different is this election from earlier tumultuous ones in American history?
What, if any, lessons can we draw from the past? Or are we in genuinely uncharted territory today?
In truth, when it comes to presidential elections, this country has faced some frightening moments in its history, ones that touch on a number of the fears that confront us today. We may never have faced the likes of Donald Trump, but we have experienced disputed vote tallies, Supreme Court interference, threats of violence, voting rights restrictions, and a lack of confidence in the process itself.
Contested Elections
Donald Trump has made no bones about it. Should he lose the coming election, he reserves the "right" to refuse to accept the results. In 2020, his denial of the results led to a violent attempt to block Congress from certifying the vote on the following January 6th. To date, any accountability for his past actions has been minimal. Found guilty last month of falsifying business records to conceal election law violations in 2016, he has yet to be sentenced and may well appeal all the way up to a sympathetic Supreme Court. Moreover, he hasn't been tried yet in Georgia and in federal court in Washington, D.C., on significantly more serious criminal charges about ways he and his followers tried to subvert the results of the 2020 election -- and he's unlikely to be before the November elections.
Most Republicans have remained at his side. Indeed, election denialism has become a rallying point rather than a mark of shame. As a result, the former president continues to engage in implied threats to the democratic political process with unwavering partisan support. And were he to disappear from the political scene thanks to a decisive defeat in 2024, others could follow him in exploiting the democratic system for political gain.
While there have been a handful of disputed presidential election results since the country's founding, two stand out. In the election of 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular and electoral vote to Samuel Tilden. The Republicans protested that, in three states, the results were uncertain. To resolve the issue, Congress created a bipartisan panel, including House and Senate representatives and five Supreme Court justices. That panel then granted Hayes all 20 disputed electoral votes, giving him a one-point electoral margin over Tilden, and so making him president. Ultimately, the country found a way forward.
More than a century later, in the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, the results again lay in dispute. Gore had won the popular vote, but the electoral vote was too close to call. All eyes focused on Florida where the results would determine the outcome. Although the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount, the Supreme Court stopped it and, in doing so, made Bush president.
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