Democracy: for better and for worse
by Tom Sullivan
Rick Hasen had a particularly blue Monday: “I believe I’ve never been called a Nazi before today.” Twitter users piled on over a Slate headline Hasen did not write atop an article many did not read. So it goes with social media.
Hasen argues against Democrats calling the Georgia governor’s race “stolen” (Sen. Sherrod Brown) or “illegitimate” (Stacey Abrams) for three reasons. One, “rhetoric about stolen elections feeds a growing cycle of mistrust and delegitimization of the election process.” Two, former Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s blatant efforts to suppress the vote in Georgia, while odious, have not been proven illegal. Hasen believes, “making charges of a stolen election when it cannot be proved undermines Democrats’ complaints about suppressive tactics.” And three, “stolen election” rhetoric diverts attention from how erecting bogus obstacles to voting violates the “dignity and respect” due each voter and onto election outcomes instead.
One reader counters that a fine distinction between voter suppression and stolen elections does not exist for the disenfranchised. Fair point, Hasen replied, “I guess that I’m desperately worried about both voter suppression and about delegitimization of our electoral system and democratic processes.”
On points one and two, calling the election stolen is inflammatory in the same way for Democrats as it is for GOP voters. But concern for their credibility has never stopped GOP operatives from making unproven allegations of widespread voter fraud that led us to this point.*
An argument Hasen doesn’t quite make is that after so many months of inflammatory and baldfaced Trumpish lies, Democrats trading in similar talk, even if justified, reduces the argument over voting rights to he-said/she-said. So it will be portrayed in the press: overheated rhetoric.
Concern about delegitimization of the election process is valid, of course. But that horse has left the barn. The GOP spent decades purposefully undermining the public’s confidence in elections. Kris Kobach, Hans von Spakovsky, Brian Kemp and other GOP hucksters spun the legend of voter fraud to create public demand for voter ID and other vote-suppressing regulations that would tilt game the system in their favor. They personalized their pitch, arguing that a single illegitimate ballot “steals your vote.” Promoting “election integrity,” they mug, is oh, so vital for rebuilding public trust they themselves worked so assiduously to undermine to their benefit.
That they have done so through “bureaucratic legerdemain and malfeasance in office” is beside the point, argues Charlie Pierce: “Is there an exemption by which theft is not theft if it is done under the color of law?”
In similar fashion, red-leaning states starve efforts to replace aging and vulnerable voting equipment as well as improvements to the process Hasen wants to see. When machines break down, when clerks turn away purged voters, when standing in line to vote takes hours, those too undermine voter confidence in democratic government. Just as planned. Hasen’s point about calling it theft is well-taken, but the experience of having your voice stolen by a sabotaged process is far more potent than the rhetoric.
Rachel Maddow last night provided graphics to illustrate how rigged the system is, albeit legally.
In state after state, Republicans have tilted the playing field, perverting democracy to their advantage. pic.twitter.com/xmF6vFfhrn— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) November 20, 2018
On Hasen’s third point, attention does indeed need to remain fixed on how rigging the election process degrades the dignity and respect of voters who out of respect for and in service to our hard-fought democracy stand for hours to have their voices heard, only to have doors slammed in their faces by patriotic poseurs.
But nobody is fooled by flag-hugging that what is left of the Republican Party has any scruples left to shed. Nor has the party faith in any form of democracy that does not guarantee its rule. The sitting president is not the source of that royalist sentiment, but a product of it. The GOP has spent decades and innumerable dollars undermining the public’s confidence in elections to lock in its power. In the process of repairing what is broken, will bluntly pointing that out make it worse?
* I just re-reviewed the Heritage Foundation’s updated bundle of 1,088 “voter fraud” cases used to bolster the case for voting restrictions. To pad out their count, the archive includes cases going back to 1948. Any and all varieties of election rigging, registration fraud, vote-buying, even ballot petition fraud are lumped together under the rubric of voter fraud (which they use interchangeably with election fraud). Counts are approximate because some crimes overlap. A sampling:
Impersonation Fraud at the Polls: 13. A couple of those involve election judges and one by a man wanting to demonstrate how easy it is to impersonate someone at the polls.
Duplicate voting: 54. Many of the duplicate voting cases involve 2-state voting; 7 cases were attempted & thwarted by election judges.
Ineligible Voting: 201. Most of the ineligible voting cases involve felons and non-citizens improperly registered, many already possessing IDs.
Altering the Vote Count: 5. One dates from 1948.
Ballot Petition Fraud: 72