This week, a Christmas tree was placed at Rockefeller Center in New York. I’ve watched this movie several times and it’s like watching a train wreck – I can’t look away. When the tree was lifted, many of the lower limbs fell off, revealing incredibly gigantic gaps. Unless a magician takes care of decorating the Christmas tree, it will become the perfect symbol of 2020 and a terrifying reminder of the horrors of this year. 2020 is the year of everything ugly.
Many of us, understandably, just want to move on to 2021, to a time that might just be better. However, in the pursuit of progress, we should not ignore the real problems that must come to lightweight, regardless of the outcome.
While many Americans and most news outlets are pushing for a presumed victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, we should all remember that 2020 is not over yet. Many Americans believe the election was unfair and the currently reported result is misleading.
According to a poll sponsored by The Economist and conducted by YouGov, an overwhelming majority of Trump voters (86 percent) believed that Biden “did not legitimately win the election,” and 73 percent indicated that “we will never know the true result of this election.” Given that Trump voters made up roughly half of the total, over 40 percent of our voters do not believe the election was legal. This is a real problem for the future of our country.
Even if you believe the election was fair and Biden actually won, these numbers should make you stop and think about the long-term effects of distrust in American elections. Everyone’s number one goal should be to get the process right to ensure transparency and visibility. If the elections were conducted correctly, there should be no problem in bringing everything to lightweight.
Some may argue that we should just move on, but throughout our nation’s history we have allowed this process to work. In 2000, the George W. Bush-Al Gore dispute was not resolved until December 9, when the Supreme Court (5-4) decided to grant Bush a stay of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision. In 1824, no one won the Electoral College. The winner, John Quincy Adams, was chosen by the House of Representatives the following February.
The 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican governor of Ohio, and Samuel Tilden, the Democratic governor of New York, resulted in Hayes becoming president in the unwritten compromise of 1877. Compromise? Four states that had 20 undecided electors promised them to Hayes on the condition that Republicans withdraw federal troops from the South. This led to the end of reconstruction.
After the removal of federal troops, many white Republicans fled the South, and control of the southern state political structure was consolidated by Democratic “Redeemers” who disenfranchised blacks.
The founders created a complicated system that balances popular vote, a federal system, state size, and the understanding that pure democracy can lead to uncomplicated majority rule and leave little room for political compromise. They also provided a process involving legislative bodies – legal remedies. Gore took this route in 2000. Trump has every right to work the system, as does Gore.
In my home state of Georgia, attorney L. Lin Wood Jr. filed an emergency motion with the courts for an injunction against the Georgia Secretary of State. One of his arguments is that the March 2020 agreement changed the process for verifying signatures on absentee ballots and that it was not approved by the state Legislature, which constitutionally controls elections. This would make the elections unconstitutional and their results invalid.
What do we know about the change to the absentee signature verification process? This was more labor intensive than what was specified by the state legislature. In 2018, absentee ballots were rejected due to signature discrepancies (3.5%) in the Georgian election. In the 2020 election, after changes agreed to by Georgia’s secretary of state but not approved by the legislature, the rejection rate was 0.3%, a 92% decline.
While we don’t know what the rest of 2020 will bring, to put our nation on solid footing, we must have a system that a majority of voters trust.
