Both parties abuse election integrity talk

Is the integrity of the vote at risk? Are voting rights being massively abridged? Do we, on the other hand, have a broken voting system, one that is corrupt at worst and incompetent at best?

Many — on both sides of the great divide — say, “The game was rigged.” This is dangerous nonsense.

No, no and no. And yet, President Joe Biden said the first two things in a major speech in Philadelphia. The rhetoric was soaring, and he seemed to genuinely believe the vote is at risk.

But the speech contained no evidence for the contention that Republicans in state legislatures are systematically and successfully denying the vote to millions of Americans.

What can be asserted, with total confidence, is that many Republicans want to game the system to their advantage. They want to make it easier for the folks they think are “their” voters and harder for people they think are not theirs. That is corrupt and deplorable, and yes, we agree with the president, un-American.

But asking people to bring identification to a polling place is not onerous, oppressive or unfair. It is done throughout the world. And it has long been done in the U.S., including in 2020, when there was a record turnout.

The problem is not that the vote is being suppressed, or that it ever could be to the degree that it was under Jim Crow in the old South. The problem is that public officials should so politicize voting rules, that they should be so cynical in doing this, that we cannot have an honest and practical discussion of election practices and procedures.

There is no evidence that most of the new voting rules in most of the states will suppress the vote. They may even have the opposite effect. Meanwhile, confidence in our system is dealt another blow.

The president and the Democrats may have a good propaganda point with this issue. But they do their cause and the nation no good by so exaggerating the threat.

And, with the For the People Act, which would do many things unrelated to voting, they echo President Donald Trump’s claim that the system is broken or rigged. It is neither. It works pretty well.

In the states where it was close in 2020, we got a final, definitive and trustworthy result. In New York City, where the mayor’s primary race seemed to be in chaos just days ago, election officials did, in the end, sort things out and get an accurate result, and a winner.

What we need to do is take each proposal in each state and debate it on the merits.

• Are drop boxes consistent with deliberative democracy? We have doubts.

• But Sunday voting seems to expand and protect the franchise and be immune to fraud. On what grounds should it be denied?

• How early should early voting be permitted? A week, a month, a year before a primary or general election?

These matters should be debated, by all who care, as citizens, not partisans. As with public health and medical science, there is nothing to be gained by ideology and much to be gained by the application of evidence and reason. But, as with science, both parties have turned election law into a poetry slam by zealots instead of a logical discussion.

We need a voting rights bill that is precise and limited to setting recourse and remedy for people whose vote is denied or delayed. And we need the law to protect open polls, run by independent observers.

Finally, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division should be fully staffed and funded so it can act where genuine potential suppression of the vote is taking place.

This, the president has done. It is far more constructive than saying we have another existential crisis that we do not have.

Here is the existential crisis we truly do have: The tendency of so many Americans to cry fraud when their candidate or their party loses, fair and square.

Americans used to regard political defeat as a temporary setback: “We will live to fight another day.”

Today, many, on both sides of the great divide, say: “The game was rigged.”

This is dangerous nonsense.