Opinion: Doubting Democracy

Doubt captures the one sentiment that is needed to destroy a democracy. Once a large enough percentage of the populace begins to doubt their democratic system, democracy dies.  President Donald Trump has established doubt in the American electoral process this cycle. Not only is President Trump creating doubt by refusing to accept the election results, he is also actively calling the election itself fraudulent and corrupt. President Trump’s followers will stand with him on his views, creating the reality of a worrisome amount of Americans that believe the country’s election is a farce. If the Republican Party or other institutions do not stop President Trump’s constant slandering of our democratic process this will become a vital moment for the life of democracy for now and the future.

Every candidate holds the right to request a recount in an election. The Democratic Party’s gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Georgia requested an election recount during the 2018 Midterm Elections. Point being that asking for a recount goes across party lines and President Trump has the right to ask for a recount in the 2020 Presidential Race. Where President Trump endangers American Democracy is by claiming that the election itself is fraudulent. Asking for a recount still supports the legitimacy of the election but allows for the possibility of human mistakes that can be made while counting ballots and reporting. A call for a recount still accepts the results of the election itself while attempting to make sure the election results are correctly reported. The difference of what President Trump is doing is that he actively attacks the election itself.  Asking for a recount still accepts the authority of a democratic election but President Trump’s stance is that he rejects the authority of the election altogether.

President Trump’s stance this election cycle has been complete denial of the authority and integrity of the 2020 Presidential Election. Before the official election results were assessed, President Trump made claims such as, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” and “As everybody saw, we won by historic numbers. And the pollsters got it knowingly wrong. They got it knowingly wrong.”  President Trump claiming victory before the election is concluded leads a substantial number of Americans to believe that if President Trump loses, the election must be rigged. Countless Americans then discredit the authority of our democratic election and disregard the results of the voting process. President Trump’s injection of doubt into the American consciousness before the election combined with the irregularities of widespread voting by mail due to the coronavirus has led many Americans to the same conclusion as Iowa voter Meg Schneider who said “I just don’t trust the system.” The legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential Election and future presidential elections will become seriously imperiled if millions of Americans share Schneider’s opinion of not trusting our electoral system.

That is the case after the announcing of Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential Election win. Many Americans do not trust the soundness of his victory. 70% of the Republicans believed the election was not “free and fair”. That statistic shows the dangerous impact of the rhetoric President Trump used before the election and continues to use. President Trump’s post-election claims that the election was fraudulent such as “He (President Elect Joe Biden) won because the Election was rigged,”  and conspiracy theories, such as “Dominion machines deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide”,  are adding fuel to the fire of the populace’s distrust in American democratic elections. We cannot have a functioning democracy if 70% of people from one of the two major parties believe the country’s elections are not fair. How can President-elect Biden govern when 70% of the other political party’s voters are questioning his presidential legitimacy?

This is the crossroad Republican Party leadership stands at. Republican leaders that can significantly sway their party’s public opinion are Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel, Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Kevin McCarthy. On one road, these three Republican Leaders can stick with protecting the party at all cost and support President Trump’s dangerous claims. On the other road, the Republican leaders can condemn President Trump’s comments on our democracy and protect the authority of our elections. As of now, most of the Republican leadership seems split and has not made a decisive stance to either back or condemn President Trump’s dangerous antics. More importantly, it may be future politicians watching the Republican Party’s response that will demonstrate how important this moment will be in history.

This is a critical juncture in history that the Republican Party controls. Not only will the Republican Party response have an impact now, this response also will set a tone for the rest of American history. If the Republican Party leadership supports Trump over our American democratic institutions, it will be a sign for future politicians of what they can get away with in overcoming our democracy. Supporting the party over democracy could set a dangerous precedent which would evolve to see the creation of a one-party system. History will tell that President Trump probably is not the dangerous authoritarian leader who puts a dagger in our democracy but him casting doubt in it now could allow the rise of a future leader who will kill democracy. Hitler and the Nazi Party were birthed in a democratic country, and Germans then thought such fascism would never rise from their democracy either.