OPINION:
After the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s become more apparent than ever that this election is far more than just a vote for the left or the right. It’s also a referendum on whether America’s age-old systems and institutions should remain in place or be replaced with one-sided partisan politics entirely.
Shortly after Justice Clarence Thomas swore Justice Barrett in, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, stated what many Democrats have been saying for weeks now: It’s time to pack the court.
Leftists claim that these calls stem from a desire to equalize Republicans’ so-called hypocrisy over the confirmation process between Justice Barrett and Obama nominee Merrick Garland. However, these calls all boil down to one thing: the desire to eliminate any and all checks and balances on power and turn America into a country of mob rule.
Wanting the majority party to have a monopoly over the national debate and decision-making process is also why the left wants to eliminate the filibuster and reshape the Senate into a majoritarian body like the House, contrary to the vision of America’s Founders. Doing so would permit them to provide blue Puerto Rico and the federally-created District of Columbia statehood, allowing them to stack Congress and the Supreme Court while shutting off all debate from the minority. This rationale is also why it wants to scrap the Electoral College in favor of a direct democracy.
Abolishing the filibuster, adding four reliably Democratic senators and turning the Supreme Court into a third political arm of the Democratic Party are important steps in silencing dissent and the rights of the minority. But it’s axing the Electoral College that represents the linchpin of their radical transformation of our country — control the presidency.
Delegitimizing the electoral system claiming both the Electoral College and voter verification are racist or tools of voter suppression is all part of the strategy. The long lines we see today at polling places are not a result of racism; they are a result of places unequipped and unprepared to handle the extent of early voting we’ve seen in the COVID-19 era. That said, undermining the system in the eyes of the public is the first step toward changing it.
Unfortunately, in this crucial respect, the Republican Party and its supporters are at risk of providing them with the ammunition to help them destroy two key bulwarks of our republic — local control of elections and the Electoral College.
Stemming from understandable concerns about voter fraud and rampant mistakes in the wake of rapidly expanding absentee balloting, many Republicans have joined Democrats in categorizing the nation’s election system as illegitimate. Members of both parties now appear willing to protest after the November 3rd votes trickle in, some violently, refusing to accept the election’s outcome if it doesn’t go their way.
Contrary to what many Democrats are saying, there are real concerns with fraud. Calling out instances of government incompetence and vote-rigging is understandable and part of our civic duty. But calling the U.S. election system illegitimate is both untrue and a threat to the pillars that our republic currently rests upon. It plays into the Democratic scheme to fundamentally transform our current system of government into mob rule.
Is there fraud? Sure. But is it determinative of national elections? No. Even the Trump commission on election integrity said so. The reason is that we have local control over elections, which makes widespread fraud more difficult to pull off. Conservatives used to trust local government more than Washington, and for good reason. The vast majority of these volunteers at the polls do a good job. Some don’t, but rather than blame the integrity of the overarching system, we should become more vigilant in sealing all of the holes.
We can and should have a conversation about stricter voter ID laws in this country. We can and should have a conversation about clamping down on all cases of fraud. But let’s not confuse increasing honesty and accountability with sowing distrust in the most incorruptible system on Earth and the outcome it produces. That’s exactly what the radicals want to turn this constitutional republic on its head want.
No system is perfect, but the United States’ is darn close. Republicans should remember how the Electoral College safeguarded some of their recent elections. Democrats should accept how it’s done the same for them in years’ past (see: the Carter-Ford election) and recognize that they benefited from minority protections as recently as a few years ago, when their Republicans controlled all branches of government.
Both sides must temper their rhetoric and do the work on Election Day to restore trust in our institutions and procedures that have worked miraculously well for 230 years in protecting the rights of all Americans against the tyranny of the mob.
As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.”
• Rick Santorum served as a U.S. senator for Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007.
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