Here Are the Three Best Ways Democrats Can Protect Our Democracy
It's time for the Left to stop talking and start taking action on one of their biggest fears
Democrats talk all the time on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other media outlets about how our democracy is in danger. What exactly does that mean? One of our biggest problems as a country is changing the meaning of words. Democracy can mean one thing to one person and a different thing to another. So how do we know what people are talking about?
It makes the most sense to assume the Left refers to elections when discussing democracy. America has been famous for close elections since 2000. The chances for real landslides like Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama won are impossible now. Trump won big in the Electoral College in 2016 while losing the popular vote and lost by similar margins in 2020.
Guaranteed close elections with people wondering if they are secure and have integrity can cause the losers to question the credibility of our democracy. Democrats denied election results in 2000 and 2004 because of thin margins in Florida and Ohio. They denied the 2016 election because of debunked Russian collusion. Trump said the election was rigged in 2020. We can’t keep doing this.
It makes the most sense to assume the Left refers to elections when democracy gets brought up.
The easiest way to ensure elections results are accurate is to have voter ID laws. Democrats say these laws are racist towards minorities. If minorities can get a cell phone plan, buy alcohol, get a COVID shot, fly, open a checking account, stay at a hotel, go to a bar, apply for government benefits, get medical services, or get a job, then why can’t they get an ID to vote? Are they implying minorities aren’t capable of getting an ID?
What’s to stop a person in a state like California from going into the voting booth and only giving their name and then going to another location to give their next-door neighbor’s name if an ID isn’t required? Why wouldn’t Democrats be worried about Republican voters stealing or canceling out Democrat votes by committing voter fraud or people voting Republican who shouldn’t be voting? They should be doing everything they can to ensure their votes count.
Mail-in voting is a threat to democracy because it opens the door to voter fraud too. A Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey found that 1 in 5 people who voted by mail engaged in some kind of fraud. Fraud instances included filling out a ballot for a friend or family, letting a friend or family fill out the ballot for you, or voting in a state where you weren’t a permanent resident. This would mean 13 million ballots shouldn’t have been counted in 2020.
Voting by mail used to be the exception and not the norm. If you wanted to vote by mail needed to request an absentee ballot for a specific reason such as travel, illness or disability, work, college attendance, or military service. COVID changed that in 2020. It was ok to riot and protest in massive crowds for Black Lives Matter because racism was a public health threat, but apparently polling precincts were teeming with COVID and unsafe, so mail-in voting became common.
This would mean 13 million ballots shouldn’t have been counted in 2020.
The final way to ensure democracy is legitimate is to ensure election results are decided by the end of election night. This never was complicated and was the norm until 2000. Florida was the joke of the nation when they had recounts last for months. They proved to be the model for the nation in recent elections by always having their results completed by the end of election night. If Florida can go from the worst to the best, so can the rest of the country.
None of these solutions are complicated and will make election results more trustworthy. A 2022 Gallup poll shows 8 in 10 Americans favor voter ID. Democrats and Republicans could unite on this to get something good done in their states. Voter ID, making in-person voting the norm again, and states getting election results finalized on election night are all things Democrats could do to protect democracy and Republicans would be on board too.