OPINION:
Democracy cannot long survive without credible assurance that every vote is going to be properly counted. While supporters of victorious candidates have no reason to upset any ballot count, the losing side is increasingly crying foul.
Fortunately, the rift between the two sides can be bridged with commonsense measures that reassure Americans — Republicans and Democrats alike — that the proclaimed winner actually prevailed.
The 2020 election, which seated President Biden in the Oval Office, drove a wedge in the electorate that’s not going away.
Gallup found the gap in the two major parties’ faith in the accuracy of the 2022 midterm election results had reached its widest point in nearly two decades: 85% of Democrats claimed to be very or somewhat confident in the results, but only 40% of Republicans believed it to be so.
When an election that looks fair to half the nation appears phony to the other half, there’s reason to be concerned for the future.
A new survey conducted by the Honest Elections Project finds robust backing for measures that would remedy the situation. An overwhelming 88% of respondents say voters should produce proper identification before casting a ballot.
Among Black respondents, 82% favor voter identification laws, and 83% of Hispanics do as well. A vanishingly small 9% of Americans want such requirements eliminated.
Sadly, only 12 states strictly enforce photo ID elections laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states have photo ID guidelines with various allowances or exemptions, and 13 states have rules that are less strict.
Among these are such provisions as the right to cast a provisional ballot that election officials attempt to authenticate after polls close.
The rest require no ID, but generally ask for some personal identification, either during voter registration or at the polling place.
The less stringent the ID requirements, the dimmer the distinction between those eligible and ineligible to vote.
The Honest Elections Project survey also finds that U.S. voters embrace the commonsense notion that unrestricted mail-in voting, which exploded during the pandemic-panicked 2020 cycle, should not become a permanent feature of U.S. elections.
The proportion of respondents claiming that in-person voting is better than voting by mail measures 76%; 73% oppose sending out ballots without a voter’s request; 74% believe ballot harvesting should be illegal, and 89% say that all ballots should be received by Election Day.
The customary stance of the left is that minorities are less apt to possess proper identification and risk being denied their right to vote and that mail-in balloting is no more vulnerable to fraud than in-person voting. Voters, minorities included, reject both positions.
Disturbing memories of mysterious late-night vote tabulation center shutdowns and expulsion of poll watchers, computerized ballot-counting anomalies, censoring of factual reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, revelations about Mark Zuckerberg’s $419 million funding of select election-support organizations and feckless refusal of courts to countenance legal challenges to these irregularities have left voters at odds over whether elections are fair.
A resurgence of robust voter ID and in-person balloting rules laws could bolster Americans’ confidence that the declared winner and actual winner are one and the same.
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