Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
“There’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections,” said Frank LaRose, a Republican who serves as Ohio’s secretary of state. “The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant. For some reason, elections breed that type of mythology. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/10/us/joe-biden-trump?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-elections-2020®ion=TOP_BANNER&context=storyline_menu_recirc#officials-across-the-us-say-they-found-no-evidence-that-voter-fraud-played-a-role-in-the-election-results
Contesting an election is a democratic privilege, and every candidate’s right. But that doesn’t prevent the damage of rumor and innuendo, which contaminate a legitimate process and undermine the voting public’s faith in democracy. It is as if a decent citizen was sued and exonerated, and the foul memory of a battered reputation remains associated with his good name. President Trump knows only too well the power of lawsuits to cast a shadow on decent institutions.
The President will try our patience and strain our credulity until he knows he has left a permanent stain on our memories and undermined our faith in elections. Thus the legitimate process of recount and investigation becomes a “mythology,” as Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state reflected on the 2020 Presidential election. Day by day we are losing our faith in a fair election and the legitimacy of the President-elect Joe Biden.
By “we” I mean the minority of the minority that voted for the re-election of the President. A sizable majority of Americans (79%, Ipso Reuters poll) believe in the process we have just participated in with a splendid voter turnout. We have heard voting officials of state after state reassure us that the process was clean and efficient. The Electoral College margin is potentially 75 votes, and the popular spread 5 million. Only rumor and mythology remain to cast doubt.
But the enduring mythology of unfair elections will be hard to dissipate. By the next Presidential election some whiff of conspiracy will remain. Someone will be sure to remind us of the taint of 2020, as if something untoward had occurred. We will only vaguely remember that the election was contested, but probably fail to remember why.
Mythology and conspiracy survive; truth and efficiency fade. That is why the investigations and the lawsuits should end. They are silently sowing the doubt which could contaminate every future Presidential election.