Confidence in election results worth the wait
We are living in limbo in America. We want the answer, but we have to wait for it. It is hard not to know, hard not to look ahead to Nov. 4. Yet here we are. There are many hours to pass before we resolve an election that could change our country fundamentally. Hours to pass until we learn whether we will continue this 232-year experiment of safely conducting our elections, counting all the votes, accepting the results and moving on. And hours until we find out if, instead, we will devolve to chaos, uncertainty, and even violence.
It is no secret, I picked a team. By now, just about all of us have. I’m with former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Maybe you picked the other team. That’s OK. But let’s agree on this: The world is full of countries where elections are predetermined, where expressing opposition views leads to imprisonment and where balloting disputes devolve into violence.
It’s getting worse, too. Democracies and democratic institutions are threatened around the world. Will we be Turkey or Hungary, clamping down on the very institutions that foster freedom — such as the press and the judiciary? Will we be Belarus, where citizens have had to take to the streets for months to advocate for democracy, unwilling to give in to an autocrat who jerry-rigged another election to continue his rule?
In a democracy, carefully counting the votes and determining the winner is a first principle. We need to all agree that this task is more important than who wins. Sadly, after months of the president openly attacking the levers of the election itself, I worry. President Donald Trump spent weeks trashing mail-in and absentee ballots. His man at the U.S. Postal Service has worked to erode the efficient delivery of those ballots. Republicans have been openly pursuing an election strategy of litigating practically every procedure, every ballot and every citizen who wants to vote.
Worse, Trump proclaimed a “rigged election” before the first ballots were cast. He used the forum of a presidential debate to suggest that he would not accept a peaceful transfer of power. And, in recent days, believing his best hope for victory is to receive more votes on Election Day, Trump has suggested publicly that ballots not counted on Election Day should not count.
But despite it all, I believe we can conduct a free and fair election. And if record early numbers are an indicator, voters are speaking loudly — it just may take many days before we know with certainty what they are saying. We can have confidence in the election results — if we have the patience to get all the votes counted.
Isn’t that something worth waiting for? Once that happens, I am prepared to accept the results of the election even if my guy does not win. I believe most Americans — including the millions who will vote for the other guy — agree with me. But there are long hours ahead until we know for sure.