Violence in politics is no answer

OPINION:

America was brought into existence by force. Lacking an alternative, our founders were compelled to throw off the yoke placed on our necks by British tyrants rather than wait peaceably for it to be lifted. Despite that beginning, however, we generally forswear violence as a means of resolving political disputes.

Our differences are settled at the ballot box, not with the cartridge box — a lesson apparently lost on some. The news coming out of New Mexico that Solomon Pena, on the losing side of a 2022 state legislative election, allegedly hired men to join him in shooting up the homes of opposition party elected officials and others in positions of influence is alarming. That he did it because he believed his loss was due to a lack of seriousness about claims he made about voter fraud further elevates our concern.

It is fashionable these days for conservatives to blame their defeat at the polls on fraud. We don’t doubt it sometimes happens, but to what degree is as yet unproven. Anyone can crunch numbers and scrutinize videos and develop narratives that make things look fishy, but in the end, no one has yet produced — and we hesitate to use this metaphor after what just happened in the American Southwest — a smoking gun.

Lack of evidence is not a reason to drop the issue. There should be inquiries. The people have the right to know our elections are honest. Official explanations for procedural oddities do not always suffice, nor should they. Nonetheless, it might be wise to take the temperature down a few degrees moving forward before legitimate concerns are ignored under an avalanche of complaints coming from sore losers.

The security of the American franchise matters. The voter rolls must be accurate, people should be required to produce proof of identity before being allowed to cast a ballot in person or by mail, and the rules under which elections are conducted should be clear, concise, and free from changes in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day. In addition, the number of days available to cast ballots without explaining why one cannot vote on the day designated in person should be compressed, and ways to speed up the counting of votes must be found. The right to vote is not just important. It’s a reflection of popular sovereignty, of the idea “We, the People,” are in ultimate charge.

That matters whether American elections are squeaky clean or resemble something one might see in a movie about politics in Chicago in the 1930s. The feckless, reckless talk coming from some quarters helps obscure genuine deficits in electoral integrity. It emboldens people like Mr. Pena to strike out — irrationally, one presumes — in the pursuit of justice over imagined wrongdoing.

Despite what some like to claim, our republic is not fragile. It has endured through incidents far more significant than what Mr. Pena et al. are accused of doing. We must be careful not to make too much of it lest it be fodder for people bent on remaking things in a harsher, less democratic way.

If our leaders choose to turn this into a partisan spectacle, the sharp awfulness of what happened in New Mexico will be dulled. In some ways, none of us are at fault save for the perpetrators alone. Yet we all bear a bit of the responsibility because we have indulged the righteous indignation with which both parties have approached the issues leading up to and after Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol melee rather than repudiate it.

Much will be made in the coming days of Mr. Pena’s ties to the GOP, which, while barely existent, are nonetheless there, and that his targets were Democrats. How our leaders act and what they say about this will tell us much about their character, but not, we suspect, much about the people of our country. Most of us are abundantly reasonable, fair-minded, and unwilling to be drawn into frenzied protest by fiery political rhetoric. Cooler heads usually prevail. Meanwhile, let us hope our leaders will take the higher road, urging us all to reject violence as a means of settling political disputes.

Violence in American politics is wrong, and we reject it, whether it happens in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, neighborhood or on an Alexandria, Virginia, ballfield.