Rather than sustain our elections, our president works to undermine the process by which we ensure that leaders remain accountable to us. It’s important to understand clearly some of the reasons that anti-democratic figures like him regularly employ this tactic:
At the most basic and instinctual level, they hope to erode their supporters’ confidence in the integrity of elections so that they distrust unfavorable results and evidence of the leaders’ unpopularity, an early step towards quashing dissent more generally.
Secondly, such leaders hope to convince their supporters of the need for unusual infringements on their opponents’ rights (usually in the name of “election integrity,” ironically) that they may pursue in order to suppress opposition voting.
Lastly, they hope to inspire a lack of confidence in elections among, in this case, all Americans, so that we develop sense of apathy about voting and electoral outcomes all together.
If this apathy progresses, it can metastasize into widespread ambivalence about all of our democratic processes, an erosion of our leaders’ and institutions’ perceived legitimacy, and further violations of our voting and other rights.
That’s why it’s so important that we not let his words or actions convince us to disregard the value and integrity of our elections. Free and fair elections are based in our humanity - in our equality - and the single most important mechanism by which free people stay free.
