No matter who wins the presidential race next week, many millions of Americans will come to believe that the election was stolen or, at minimum, fatally tainted by fraud.
That’s a travesty for our constitutional republic. And the blame falls on partisans, cranks, and quacks of all stripes, both Democrats and Republicans, who have over the years accused one side or the other of trying to cheat.
It’s all getting worse, of course.
As I wrote last week, even though all the trend lines seem to be pointing Trump’s way next week, if Harris does manage to eke out a win in the Blue Wall states — something that is absolutely still on the table according to the data — “tens of millions of Americans will never, ever buy it.”
The “vibe shift” may indicate a truly changed reality, or it may be merely a mirage, but what’s certain is that Trump, Trump’s campaign, and millions of Trump’s voters think the vibe shift is real and that Trump is on his way to a restoration. If Trump loses now, he will have extremely fertile ground to sow discord and calumny by claiming that another election was stolen from him. Many of his strongest supporters and, now, many “normie”-style Republicans will believe him.
That’s our unfortunate reality — one that the Republicans’ three-time nominee, Donald Trump, has played no small part in — and it’s made worse by the other side of the coin: If Trump and the Republicans win, many Democratic partisans, who had seen themselves as the champions of “our democracy” during the Trump era, will begin immediately finding ways to explain away Trump’s reelection as illegitimate.
There’s not a lot of good news here.
What’s needed is for both sides — yes, both sides — to agree to modest reforms around our elections.
Republicans should relent on what is, in my view, a reasonable objection, in principle, to adding an additional federal holiday and acquiesce to giving all Americans the day off every two years on the day of a General Election. The progressive assertion that many people simply cannot make time to vote on Election Day and that a national holiday is therefore needed is absurd. But declaring a federal holiday for Election Day every two years would remove all reasonable accusations that, under our system, some people cannot exercise their right to access the polls.
In exchange, Democrats should broadly embrace a limited period of early in-person voting — say, one week — and consent to the requirement that all ballots, both those mailed in and those cast early in person, should be tabulated on a rolling basis so that actual results can be announced as soon as possible after the polls close instead of days or even weeks later.
Most important, Democrats should embrace voter-ID requirements — not because they necessarily like voter-ID laws, or see them as a genuine obstacle to fraud, but because Democrats should see voter ID as in their self-interest.
The goal of my Grand Bargain on voting rules is to reestablish trust. Many Democrats have long objected to voter-ID requirements because of the fact that there is very little evidence that the small amount of voter fraud that does happen in a given election makes a material difference to the outcome of races. Even if, Democrats say, some voter fraud will always happen in a country of 330 million people, the outcomes of elections are not being changed, and voter-ID laws simply serve to disenfranchise marginal voters. That’s the Democrats’ steel-man argument anyway, such as it is.
But as Jeff Bezos put it this week, “voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.”
In a similar way, only eligible voters should be able to cast a vote, and the public must believe that only eligible citizens are able to cast a vote. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first, and voter-ID laws would go a long way toward allaying the doubts of many Americans around our elections.
Indeed, the fact that the public sees voter ID as a nearly 80–20 issue further serves to engender suspicion when objections are made. Most Americans simply cannot see a reasonable case against voter ID. Republicans, Democrats, and independents of all varieties, i.e., normal Americans, overwhelmingly say that it’s ridiculous that people need to show identification at the bank or to get into Costco but that the county election board will take your word for it.
A republic cannot function without trust. Whatever the outcome of this election, both parties need to find ways to turn down the temperature and rebuild the civic compact. That’s a big task. But these are small measures that, taken together, can add up to a Grand Bargain.
Look, I’ll say it again: Republicans have a part to play in all this by rejecting the quacks and cranks in their circles and by giving a little on a national holiday for Election Day.
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders should see voter-ID laws as fundamentally in their interest — because after all, they’re Americans too.