The 2020 election cycle marks an increasingly contentious time for American politics. The two parties are no longer representations of ideals or policy preferences, but have instead transformed into their own essentialist tribes with morality intertwining with membership. Yet politics is more complicated than one side being “good” and the other “bad.” Both parties bear responsibility for creating an air of ambiguity around this year’s presidential election, and the points each raise are worth considering.
Legacy media and countless op-ed pieces write about the fear of President Donald Trump intending to contest the election results. Democrats and left-leaning members of the media argue that Trump will certainly contest the result of the election if he loses and will do all within his power to interrupt the voting process to ensure his victory. This fear cannot be entirely dismissed. Trump does not generally display the personality type that plans for defeat, but his recent words raise concern that he may meddle in ways to benefit his reelection. But there’s a risk that exists when “if” seamlessly turns into “when.”
Political pundits have taken these concerns as serious threats. The Atlantic released an op-ed that considers Trump’s potential manipulation of the election as a given. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer also spoke to former U.S. national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster about what role the military could take in the event that Trump does not concede. Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin too, as reported in Variety, gave an elaborate writer’s fantasy of both sides coming together to remove Trump from office. These scenarios bear a certain resemblance to the story of King Philip II of Macedon and the Spartans; Philip went to the rulers of Sparta, the ephors, and threatened that they should submit, stating, “for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city,” to which the Spartans replied, “if.” Similarly, if Trump loses the election, the military will turn against him and the Republican Party will align with the Democrats to support his removal.
These assumptions do not address whether the calls from the Republican Party, as well as those from Trump himself, are at all legitimate. The Democrats have spoken in this election to abolish the electoral college, massively expand mail-in voting and pack the Supreme Court with Democrats. Each of these strategies provide an opportunity for the Democrats to prevent a contested election.
The last time court packing was seriously proposed was under former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it was strongly resisted by both parties in the Senate. The concept of packing the court is currently being raised for exclusively partisan reasons; it has nothing to do with ensuring the court makes the most constitutionally sound decision, but is rather based upon the idea that the court is “wrong” if it isn’t packed in a way that ensures progressive political initiatives. A similar argument could be made for a recent proposal to add a limit to a Supreme Court term; these limits have nothing to do with ensuring the best legal scholars or a balanced court, but instead have everything to do with ensuring partisan advantages. Should the election become contested, as was the case in the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the Supreme Court will have to decide what is considered acceptable by the Constitution. The court being down a member could make it difficult to reach a majority decision.
Abolishing the electoral college seems to come up almost every election and most often from the Democrats after they have lost. The argument is based upon the view that the Electoral College leads to a more unfair result when compared to the popular vote. This is a partially false assumption, though. The mathematics of voting methods are fairly clear on this, and, in fact, there is no such method of counting votes that is not in some capacity unfair. The purpose of the Electoral College is to balance the risks of a plurality vote, which has been comically summarized in a quote dubiously attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” The Electoral College seeks to ensure that parts of the country representing contrasting views have an equal chance to impact national policy preferences. The results do not always align with the popular vote, and there are reasonable arguments that the Electoral College disproportionately represents those from smaller states. The time to make this argument is not during an election year or immediately preceding an election when there is no time to implement it, making the point seem like sour grapes by the losing party instead of useful policy.
Mail-in voting is not immune to issues, as the recent example in Paterson, New Jersey, has shown. When almost 20% of all votes in an election are so easily dismissed from the count, that is a monumental problem. When some states’ voting process involves wholesale sending ballots to every home, there is an opportunity for fraud. This is a major difference between the absentee voting in past elections and the current system of mail-in ballots. While absentee ballots require a person to submit for one and prove they are the one submitting for it, the current system does not.
A reasonable counter-argument points to states such as Hawaii, which entirely implemented mail-in voting in 2019. Some other states are simply sending a ballot to everyone in the state without the person submitting for one. Hawaii is different from these other states in that its voting system is already designed for handling mass mail-in votes. As to the point of simply mailing a ballot to everyone, in the recent case of Nevada, more than 223,000 mailed ballots were returned as undeliverable. Of these ballots, 58% were due to incorrect addresses, exemplifying that these systems require more time to implement than may be possible within the short timeframe available. While this shows that the system is working to correct itself, the difficulty with adapting lends credence to those who question the viability of mail-in voting in this election. Even if the post office were to be working at full capacity, how can it be known that the state records are up to date enough to ensure everyone can vote?
Eric Trump, speaking in Nevada, stated if his father “got blown out of the water, of course he’d concede.” Eric Trump added that “If [my father] thought there was massive fraud, then he’d go and try and address that.” This appears to be a reasonable stance. All of this bluster and fear mongering about what Trump may or may not do comes down to “if.” If the Democrats want to actually win this election, it may be in their best interest to stop trying to scare everyone about a potential and instead focus on their own candidate. Otherwise, their worry about “if he loses” just comes down to the fantasy of the losers.
Emma Orgel (23C) is from Florida.
Emma Orgel (23C) is from Florida, majoring in political science. In addition to writing for the Wheel, she is a member of the Palm Beach Center of Democracy and Policy Research.
