Republicans can complain about voter fraud and invalid ballots being counted until they croak, but they might also want to consider, you know, actually fixing the problem.
As fate would have it, Republicans control a majority of state legislatures and even made gains on that front in the 2020 election, gaining complete control of the elected branches of two new state governments (Montana and New Hampshire). How elections are run is, at least theoretically, governed by laws passed by those governments.
The dizzying number of lawsuits filed in multiple states by the Trump campaign and Trump-supporting peripheral figures is too vast and complicated to address each one individually. But Republicans have broadly and justifiably complained that mail-in ballots were counted past the legal deadline for their reception, that protocols for ballot verification were not followed, and that certain election software was unreliable in validating ballots.
No matter how many times Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman insist that we had a squeaky clean election, these complaints are legitimate. There is abundant evidence that voter fraud did occur, even if not on a scale that would have changed the outcome of the presidential race.
Eyewitness testimony, wrongfully discarded ballots, votes cast by the deceased, and mathematical anomalies all indicate that our elections are not quite what they ought to be. Supposed “fact checks” by the national media have repeatedly tried to undermine these claims or outright call them “false,” but those assertions are based on nothing more than the word of officials who maintain that the operation they’re tasked with overseeing is a well-oiled machine.
Please. If that were true, we wouldn’t be having random ballots turn up in dumpsters and drawers weeks after Election Day.
However, Republicans are positioned to fix it. They have control of the legislature and even the governorship in several of the states where they contested the results of the election, including Georgia and Arizona. They should be working there and everywhere else they can on securing elections and eliminating the possibility of voter fraud.
Republicans can pass laws establishing and reestablishing hard deadlines for mail-in voting. If they have mail-in voting, ballots need to be made tamper-proof. Ballot gathering and chains of custody need to be streamlined with requirements that all ballots be counted only if they’ve been placed in specific and secure areas by certain deadlines. Higher standards can be set for the software used to verify and count votes.
Yes, Democrats will call any and every attempt to secure elections “racist” and cry “voter suppression.” That’s what they do even when voting records are broken and minority turnout reaches all-time highs. Democrats think that a five-minute line is a secret conspiracy to disenfranchise black women. They think requirements on requesting mail-in ballots are equivalent to a poll tax.
Republicans will have to get over it. Everything they do to secure our elections will be criticized and challenged by liberals in court. Fine, fight it out there — that’s why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has spent the last four years confirming as many federal judges as possible.
Republicans aren’t wrong to continue complaining about the election. But they’re in a place to do something about it for the next one. So, do it.
