In the recent mid-term elections, voters resoundingly defeated the election deniers—those candidates whose platforms decried the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Their defeat sent a signal that most Americans still care about rule-of-law and democracy.
In the recent mid-term elections, most of the Trump-back election deniers did not fare well. Nation-wide, over 300 candidates declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Of the 141 races where victory would determine who oversaw the next state or local election, only 14 election deniers won. In the 24 states that held elections for Secretary of State—a state’s chief election official—ten election deniers ran and two won. Election denier were defeated in six of seven key swing states: Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota, Michigan, Georgia, and Idaho. Of 36 contests for governor, 20 election deniers ran, and only seven won (six were incumbents). Many who lost even made gracious and timely concession speeches, signaling that they considered strengthening the electoral process more important that selfishly complaining and crying foul.
Nation-states, and democracies in particular, survive because the vast majority of the citizenry believe in it. When people stop believing in it, governance begins to unravel. One need look only to Haiti, to America’s south, to see an example of this. Unlike fiefdoms, where a single person has the ability to enforce decisions, democracies require group discussion and majority decision-making. In this context, those who sew doubt about America’s electoral process work to destabilize the country—something intolerable for any American, let alone a candidate running for office.
Voter turn-out at the mid-term elections reached record levels in many places and the “future of democracy” was cited as a primary cause. Despite this, more than 150 election deniers were elected to the US House of Representatives, and six to the Senate. The impact of this will likely be efforts to roll back voting protections. A bi-partisan bill called the Electoral Count Act has been floated to re-enforce the concept that Congress has nothing to do with the electoral count other than to administratively rubber-stamp it. It is not clear whether this bill will pass before the next congress seats in January.
Source:
“A Sigh of Relief,” Washington Post, 10 Nov 2022, A18.
Charlotte Alter, “Defenders of Democracy Beat Election Deniers in Every 2024 Battleground,” Time, 16 Nov 2022; accessed from https://time.com/6231852/election-deniers-2022-midterms-results/
Grete Bedekovics and Ashleigh Maciolek, “Election Deniers Lost Key Races for Federal and State Offices in the 2022 Midterm Elections, Center for American Progress, 22 Nov 2022; accessed from https://www.americanprogress.org/article/election-deniers-lost-key-races-for-federal-and-state-offices-in-the-2022-midterm-elections/
Emma Brown and Amy Gardner, “In their own Races, Key 2020 Election Deniers Concede Defeat,” Washington Post, 10 Nov 2022, A34.
Photo: Bridge Michigan