Theo Wierdsma column: Counting the votes

Joseph Stalin famously remarked that in an election, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

While stakeholders in our democratic system insist that our votes count, in reality, given our electoral system, which consistently features two major political parties, in many states the result of a presidential election contest is fairly predictable. There are currently only seven states in which the outcome remains competitive: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. And it is  precisely in those states that followers of  former President Donald Trump have taken Stalin’s remarks to heart.

Individual voters in every state essentially vote for a slate of electors that are nominally committed to a specific candidate. To win the presidency a candidate needs to amass the  majority of 538 electoral votes, distributed to states based on their size, from across the country–a total of 270. To maintain its continued viability, our system depends on the peaceful transition of power following each and every election. The 2020 election was peaceful until Mr. Trump’s supporters invaded Congress, dozens of lawsuits challenging the outcome across the country were dismissed, and a scheme introducing alternate slates of electors was foiled. However, a significant slice of the GOP base continues to pursue the issue, and it appears to be prepared to preemptively react to potential defeat in this year’s election.

Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to definitively affirm that he would accept the election results no matter who wins. He suggested he would, but only if “it’s a fair and legal and ‘good’ election.” Many of us read into this to mean that he will accept the results if he wins. He continues to maintain that the only way he can lose this fall is if Democrats cheat. While continuing to rehash the 2020 election, the former president, on his social media platform “Truth Social,” called for the Constitution to be terminated. He also proclaimed to a conservative Christian group that, if they vote for him, they won’t have to vote again after four years, because “we’ll have it fixed so good.” Troubling words indeed.

After four years of listening to Trump’s regular  drumbeat that he won the 2020 election, the GOP base is mobilizing at unprecedented levels to monitor the election under the pretext that the process is unfair and corrupt. Nearly three dozen officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 remain in office, and will play a role in certifying the presidential vote in nearly every battleground state this fall. Since 2020, county level officials in key states have tried to block the certification of vote tallies in both primary and general elections–unsuccessful thus far.

According to election and national security experts, former president Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in this year’s election are reminiscent of the tactics he used during the 2020 campaign, and indicate how he could again seek to invalidate the results if he loses, setting the stage for another combustible fight over the presidency.

According to Joshua Matz, an attorney on the board of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), “the legal ground game that was brought to bear against the election in 2020 was junior varsity compared to what we are going to see this year. There is now a much better organized, much more sophisticated, far better funded and far more intentional effort  to thwart the smooth and steady certification of election results required by law.”

We should be strapping in. Our system could be under assault again. Many officials who count the votes in battleground states are primed to dispute the outcome.

Theo Wierdsma