Louise Rosen Byer Blog
When I wrote my Letter to American Democracy a few days before January 6, 2021, I was concerned both as an elections lawyer and an American voter, that our electoral process was being challenged in unprecedented ways. We all know that what sets democracy apart is the ability of the people to decide whom they want to lead and to hold office.
Election integrity fundamental to democracy had not been challenged on a national scale until 2021. The Bush / Gore election count was not a challenge to the entire election. This challenge to our electoral process has undermined for some the general assumption and belief that our elections are secure and fair.
When I was a young lawyer, I had colleagues in the American Bar Association who went to help set up democratic elections in countries that didn’t have them. Americans are fortunate to have had years of secure elections. In the past, those responsible for carrying out elections put their partisan desires aside. Now some of those elections officials don’t seem to understand their role is to be neutral and not partisan.
There are winners and losers in every election. There is a place for ensuring fairness, but unless there is evidence proving that an election was not properly conducted, we should accept that it was. So should the losers who must tolerate loss.
When facts become fiction and fiction becomes fact, we should all be concerned. This seems to be the way these days. Once the facts are buried in the frenzy, whether on college campuses or in city governments, we all lose what we used to cherish, truth. And given the culture uninterested in analytical evaluation and open-minded discussion, truth is a commodity that apparently carries little weight.
The push to claim, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was unfair and “stolen” was a direct assault on our democracy. The American judicial system ruled over and over and over again, that there was no evidence of impropriety in the election. The repeated claims that there was, although consistently proven to be false, has damaged our once-sacred electoral pride. We have seen over the past few years in many arenas, that a misstatement of fact repeated enough, can take hold. This is not a new strategy. But it is a dangerous one.
This recent history has undermined the way we see the process. The removal of ballots from the appropriate evidentiary chain and the seizure of voting machines, could send this country into something akin to the sham elections in those countries that we used to pity.
As we approach the next elections this November and in 2028, many of us are concerned that claims of elections irregularities could take hold again. With so many individuals now in positions of control who say they believe the 2020 election was “rigged,” we are embedded with bias that could create chaos or worse. We may end up relying yet again on the Court to determine the outcome of a federal election. And if this outcome is still not accepted, we will have denigrated several of our cherished institutions all at once.
We can only hope that the democracy fought for in 1776, will remain intact and thrive for another 250 years and that we can “keep” the republic created by the courageous and dedicated patriots whose visions we have enjoyed.