What the president should have done
The administration is waging an ongoing war on our citizenry’s right to vote freely and without fear. Moreover the president himself persists in casting doubt on the results of the upcoming elections. In effect, he is de-legitimizing a bedrock process of our democracy.
Earlier this year, it became clear to everyone that the existence of a new, highly infectious disease in our midst would require special election measures. Primary voting showed the challenges. Federal, state and local officials should have responded immediately.
A president committed to democracy would have called meetings of governors to determine what each state needed to prepare, then urged Congress to prioritize funding for voting needs. He would have designated qualified personnel to coordinate emergency voter resource management to make sure opportunities for fraud would be minimized.
He would monitor and regularly report on the progress. Through example and repeated public statements, he would exhort state and local leaders to do the same.
Instead, we heard the president claim in the first 2020 presidential debate: “This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen.” By telling us wildly distorted stories or outright fabrications and by doggedly predicting chaos with absentee ballots in 2020, the president is destroying a longstanding article of faith in the United States: trust in our system of voting.
Heeding the call of the president, some locations are considering vigilante groups of his supporters to “safeguard” polling places, even though provisions already exist for trained federal election monitors to be present at polling places, if needed. The rhetoric alone amplifies feelings of hostility and mistrust on the one hand and anxiety on the other among our fellow citizens.
Instead of providing leadership and law-abiding, workable solutions, our president and certain other officials at the state and local level are deliberately sabotaging our most fundamental democratic process.
Lana Babij, Manchester