Is There a Valid, Non-Partisan Reason to Challenge the Election Results?
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Congress will meet this week to officially count the Electoral College votes, the final step in what has felt like an unusually long post-election process. It’s the same process we always follow, but it feels long because every step of the way the President has claimed fraud and called for the whole process to be halted so those bogus claims to be examined. Over the weekend we heard audio of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the President suggests that Raffensperger should “find” enough new Trump votes to flip the state’s election results.
The call is interesting primarily because of how desperate and unconvincing Trump seems — he moves from one unsubstantiated social media conspiracy theory to the next, rarely waiting to hear the Secretary of State and his team to explain precisely why each claim of widespread impropriety or error is unsubstantiated. Where is the charismatic manipulator we’ve heard the President can be in his private dealings? Trump also makes reference to a video that he says shows clear proof of malfeasance, which he states his campaign will likely release at some point (as I listened I wished someone would point out to the President that if such evidence actually exists, there is no reason to wait to make public). The call gives the impression of a scatterbrained man unraveling, unable to accept defeat.
Despite Trump’s sad clawing and urging, the election results are what they are and will not change. Nevertheless, members of Congress now object to the election results without explicitly agreeing with the President’s outlandish ravings. Like so many turns in the Trump Era, it will be empty political theater of a sort that is unprecedented in modern American history.
Given the reality of this, is it possible to come up with any fair, non-partisan reason to support an objection to the election results or calls for further investigation? Whether Trump’s claims have any real-world support has been addressed just about everywhere else, and that those claims are totally made up is so obvious as to defy serious discussion. But is it still possible to defend those who side with the President by formally objecting to the election results?
My best argument in support of those who object to the election results:
The best case I can formulate in support of the objecting members of Congress hinges on this premise: While it may be unwise to give credence to baseless claims of fraud, it would also be wrong to ignore the voters who have honest doubts in the integrity of our elections generally. It follows from this premise that it is prudent to object to the final election results not to overturn them outright, but to look into claims of impropriety before we declare the result final.
The ultimate justification for objecting would be that this is it good for our democracy in a broad sense because if voters know that all claims are thoroughly and openly examined and debunked, those who question the validity of the result can be convinced that they should indeed have faith in our electoral outcomes. So by objecting to the election results these legislators are striving to strengthen confidence in the system (as opposed to doing the exact opposite). There’s a hint of this logic in the lame, dodgy statement put out by a group of eleven objecting Senators. They’re careful not to explicitly agree with claims that American Democracy is a sham. After all, these people actually won their elections.
So, is the argument I’ve stated here convincing? Is it valid for these legislators to object on behalf of their constituents regardless of the validity of the President’s claims, to acknowledge and address the perception that our electoral system may be illegitimate?
There’s a problem here. As I strive to convince myself that this logic is sound (even if not totally convincing), I keep getting caught up on one pesky flaw in my initial premise, and I’m not sure that I can reformulate that premise in a way that makes the argument work.
Despite my own best efforts, I am not convinced…
If I whittle it down, the argument I’ve stated is founded on a broader premise than the one I started with — the very general premise that questions about election integrity should be taken seriously and should be answered. That’s a solid idea. The problem is that in this case there does not seem to be genuine interest in this idea because Trump’s claims and the “questions” that stem from them are clearly not genuine. In other words, to formulate a strong argument I was required to ignore what’s actually going on here — the people who are questioning the election results are not interested in finding real answers.
While I have no doubt that some of the President’s supporters really do believe this election was stolen (it’s not clear to me how many actually believe this, as opposed to those who are just going along with the partisan show), it does not help those people to continue to give credence to their beliefs. This is because as long as they are reliant on Trump’s leadership, they will be either unable or unwilling to reach any reasoned, reality-based conclusion. Instead, they will remain bound to search for answers that are consistent with the President’s bizarre, self-serving conspiracy theories. That is the essential point — we are not dealing with credible accusations impropriety or even honest questions about election integrity, we are dealing with conspiracy theories that are by design non-falsifiable. Entertaining those theories can do no good.
Just to be clear, I am not saying that those who question election results aren’t entitled to answers. What I am saying is that in this case the questions have been answered over and over again, recount after recount, baseless lawsuit after baseless lawsuit. And with each question answered, with every piece of clear and overwhelming evidence of the plain reality that Joe Biden won the election, the response from the President and his loyalists is the same: “Not good enough.” We all know this game, it’s one in which there can be no satisfactory answer so the questions will always keep repeating. Those who insist that Trump won his bid for reelection are either dishonest or truly deluded. In either case, they are not interested in honest inquiry or fair-minded, rational discussion. They cannot be convinced not because of the strength of their position, but because they have decided nothing will convince them. Their goal is not to discover the truth — the truth is so clear as to be undeniable — it is to cling to a fantasy and refuse to give an inch no matter how clear the reality becomes. That is why the President’s phone call with the Georgia Secretary of state shouldn’t surprise anyone. After four years in Trump’s America, we have no right to act surprised or to pretend that this isn’t what it so plainly is. Trump is not pressing for honest vindication, he is desperately seeking moral and political support. He wants to “find” evidence to allow his bizarre charade to continue. As always, loyalty to Trump requires insisting upon the President’s own made up version of events no matter how detached from reality it becomes.
What could actually convince me?
Is there anything that could change my mind? Probably not, but maybe if it was apparent that the calls for “election integrity” were focused on our elections in general as opposed to hyper-focused on the President’s single-minded and self-serving claims. If, for example, the members of Congress who object to the final Electoral College tallies were to begin by acknowledging the reality that there is no credible evidence to support the President’s claims, and then state that they are only objecting in order to call for a halt to certification of all elections to federal office (including their own), and also that they will accept the results of any resulting inquiry at the state level (something they have thus far failed to even imply)…well, maybe that would change things. But that would still require ignoring the context in which their objections are raised, thereby making it hard to imagine even as a hypothetical. And, alas, it remains purely a hypothetical.
So even stating the argument in its strongest form, objections to the final election results are only supportable if we either: (1) ignore the context in which they are occurring and the reasoning of those they are meant to placate, or (2) pretend that the President has provided credible evidence to support his claims. Either way it requires that we ignore obvious reality, and there’s been too much of that these past few years.
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