Two weeks from today, we will know who the next president of the United States will be.
Or maybe we won’t.
Or maybe we will know the results but will be unwilling to accept them.
The pundits and the polls all say this baby is just too close to call. As former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather used to say about a tight race between two candidates, “You can’t get a cigarette paper between ‘em.”
Chris Stirewalt from This Dispatch and NewsNation is famous for being part of the Fox News team that predicted Arizona for Joe Biden on election night 2020. He was right then, and he says now, “I won’t repeat all the problems about forecasting models, except for one: They offer a beguiling degree of scientific sounding certainty about a situation that is very uncertain.”
And I’m okay with that.
We do not need to know ahead of time who is going to win. In fact, the continued obsession with the polls and prognostication is insulting to voters. Ultimately, the voters do get to decide, which is the way this is supposed to work.
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said, “No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws. The basic principle of our republic is that the power rests with the people.”
But there is another part of this process that is critical, and that is an end to campaigning. At some point, the election is over. The votes are counted, and the winner is determined. Yes, there are procedures in place to challenge the outcome when there are allegations of fraud. They were fully adjudicated after the 2020 election, and we may well live through the same exercise this time.
However, the whole point of an election is to choose leaders who are then responsible for carrying out the will of the people. That is increasingly difficult when a candidate and their supporters refuse to acknowledge the results of the election.
We tend to think of elections as determining who ascends to power. While this is true, elections are also about voters accepting the outcome. Abraham Lincoln said, “No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle—the sheet anchor—of American Republicanism.”
That consent is essential for effective government, and we have been short on that lately. Elections no longer mark the end of campaigning and the beginning of governance, but rather a restart of the next campaign. And, in the case of the 2020 election, an instigation of an angry mob storming the Capitol to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
That cycle leaves voters angry and weary.
Some of us will wake up two weeks from today and not like what we hear, but we won’t be alone. That has been our story for over 230 years. There is nothing special about being disappointed now. But what has been remarkable is our historic ability to move beyond that disappointment and get to the business of governing.
Anything less risks undermining the principles of our democracy.