Worst fears for future averted

Slice of electorate rejected those seeking to control the vote

NEW YORK >> Not long ago, Joe Mohler would have seemed an unlikely person to help bury the political legacy of Donald Trump.

Mohler, a 24-year-old Republican committeeman and law student in Lancaster Township, Pennsylvania, voted for Trump in 2016. He voted for him again in 2020 — but this time with some misgivings. And when Trump began spouting lies and conspiracy theories about his 2020 loss, Mohler, who grew up in a solidly conservative area of southeastern Pennsylvania, was troubled to hear many people he knew repeat them.

Last January, after county Republican leaders aligned with a group known for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election and COVID-19 vaccines, Mohler spoke out against them — a move that he said cost him his post as chairman of the township GOP committee.

“I just realized how much of a sham the whole movement was,” he said.

Mohler was part of a precariously narrow but consequential slice of the electorate that went against its own voting history this year to reject Republican candidates who sought control over elections, at least in part out of concern for the health of the political system and the future of democracy.

The decisions of voters like Mohler, discernible in surveys and voiced in interviews, did not necessarily lay to rest concerns about the ability of the election system to withstand the new pressures. But they did suggest a possible ceiling on the appeal of extreme partisanship — one that prevented, in this cycle, the worst fears for the health of democracy from being realized. In Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, Republican primary voters nominated candidates campaigning on Trump’s election lies for secretary of state, the office that in 40 states oversees the election system.

In all three, those candidates lost.