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The Commission on Presidential Debates promised to tighten the rules for the next two debates "to ensure a more orderly discussion."
Democracy's challenges pushed to new depths by a shambolic debate
Sep 30 2020
Now it's a presidential debate that has created the latest low-point for our dysfunctional democracy — and on several fronts.
Tuesday night's chaotic 90 minutes of hectoring, crosstalk, bombast, browbeating, baseless assertions and buck-passing will be remembered, at a minimum, for effectively extinguishing the already sullied concept of civil political discourse.
It will also be known for President Trump finding yet another venerable democratic institution — somber debate of the top issues by the nation's two would-be leaders — that he was eager to attack. He employed so much off-point heckling and demeaning personal attacks that his exasperated challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, twice labeled Trump a "clown."
And that was all before the sitting American president decided to intensify his unprecedented assault on the integrity of the coming presidential election itself and his unwillingness to promise a peaceful transition, unheard-of rattling of democracy's bedrock before a global audience that included an estimated 29 million American voters.
<p>"Having a repeat of last night's debate risks muddying the waters on what should be quintessential democratic values, and foreign adversaries could try and amplify such rhetoric in an effort to sow further confusion and chaos ahead," David Levine of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan group formed to prevent a repeat of Russian interference in the presidential election, warned Wednesday.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"The U.S. election crisis moved to Code Red" because of the debate, said Josh Silver, founder of the prominent democracy reform group <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/representus" target="_self">RepresentUs</a>. "This is unprecedented in American history. If you're not worried about a coup d'etat by this president, you're not paying attention."</p><p>The Commission on Presidential Debates promised Wednesday that it would soon tighten the rules for the next two debates "to ensure a more orderly discussion."</p><p>Biden's "Will you shut up, man?" demand may be remembered as the clarion soundbite of the shambolic previous night, one when Trump's bullying and bluster amplified the notion that the presidency itself has become so demeaned as to further weaken democracy.</p><p>That was reinforced in the final substantive exchange. Trump unspooled a scattershot set of grossly exaggerated or essentially fabricated examples of election cheating to cast fresh doubt on the validity of the vote. He asserted wrongly that several states had extended the time for voting, when what they have done is extend deadlines for the arrival of absentee votes postmarked by Election Day. He refused, for the third time in a week, to promise to be part of an orderly transfer of power if he loses. And he declined, when asked by moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News, to pledge to not "engage in any civil unrest" or "not declare victory" until the count was complete.</p><p>As he has for months, Trump asserted without genuine evidence that the record use of mail-in ballots, thousands of which have already been completed, would assure "this is going to be a fraud like you've never seen." </p><p>"They're being sold. They're being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country. This is not going to end well," he declared. </p><p>Trump also said he was likely to insist that the Supreme Court be the ultimate referee in disputes over absentee ballots — which could mean a delay of weeks if not months in the final outcome. It also has Senate Democrats intensifying their campaign to persuade Trump's nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, to recuse herself from any election cases if confirmed in time.</p><p>"I think I'm counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely." Trump said of the justices. "I hope we don't need them, in terms of the election itself. But for the ballots, I think so, because what's happening is incredible."</p><p>Biden, for his part, was unequivocal in committing to accepting the final results of the election regardless of the outcome — also saying unequivocally that he views voting by mail as trustworthy and noting the president's own casting of Florida absentee ballots from the White House. He said Trump's smears against absentee ballots — at a time when tens of millions will use them for the first time to avoid coronavirus exposure — are part of his effort to suppress turnout.</p><p>"This is all about trying to dissuade people from voting because he's trying to scare people into thinking it's not going to be legitimate," Biden said in response to Trump. "If we get the votes, it's going to be all over. He can't stay in power."</p><p>Nonetheless, the president appeared to be inviting a constitutional crisis if the margins are too close to call in many battleground states until days after Election Day — which is very possible because several of them don't even start processing their piles of absentee ballots until that day. </p><p>One of them is Pennsylvania, where Trump also wrongly asserted that GOP-friendly poll watchers were wrongly prevented from observing the first day of in-person early voting in Philadelphia. The Trump campaign has no poll watchers approved to work in the city, and traditional polling stations that permit observers have not yet opened.</p><p>The debate started an hour after the House voted 397-5, with the dissenters all Republicans, for a resolution affirming support for a peaceful transfer of power. The Senate adopted a nearly identical measure by voice vote last week.</p>
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New Mexico: How one state's story reflects the long, strange journey toward the election
Sep 29 2020
Usually, the results of a presidential election provide the main drama. Usually, it is not the story of how Americans are going to vote that's packed with twists, conflicts, and a constant litany of first evers and never befores.
Of course, almost nothing about 2020 has been usual. In fact, it may be the most historically significant year leading up to a national election in memory. So the fighting over how to hold a comprehensive, safe and reliable election has often been tough to follow in the shadows of impeachment, pandemic and economic calamity.
There are five weeks to go. But the path traveled so far — by good-government activists, election officials, security watchdogs, political leaders, legions of attorneys and regular citizens — becomes clear through the lens of a single state. We've chosen New Mexico. It's more rural, poor, politically blue and demographically brown than the nation. But its election experience this year nicely reflects the calamity the country's already gone through, even before the fight over the actual count begins.
<h3>Ready for the war games<br>
</h3><p>
As the long campaign season began, talk about a fair and trustworthy vote was almost entirely about election security.
</p><p>
After all, numerous investigations — by special counsel Robert Mueller, by Congress and by the intelligence community itself — had reached the same conclusion: Russia repeatedly attempted to hack into our election systems in 2016. Its efforts were mostly unsuccessful. But the mere idea of a foreign power trying to fiddle with our most sacred of democratic institutions had set off a flurry of activity to strengthen the country's defenses against election hacking.
</p><p>
And so just days before last Christmas about 120 local and state election officials — including New Mexico's election director, Mandy Vigil — gathered in a suburban Washington hotel ballroom for war games on different cyber-security election disaster scenarios.
</p><p>
Among the speakers was a former Army officer with battlefield experience. Participants worked out of binders titled "The Elections Battlestaff Playbook." Some facilitators insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of their security work.
</p><p>
The militaristic vibe was intentional, explained one of the hosts, Eric Rosenbach, an Army intelligence officer before he was chief of staff to Defense Secretary Ash Carter in the Obama administration. "Let's be honest," he said. "If democracy is under attack and you guys are the ones at the pointy end of the spear, why shouldn't we train that way?"
</p><p>
New Mexico entered the year better positioned than many states because it was already doing two things election security experts view as essential for assuring election integrity.
</p><p>
Back in 2006, it became one of the earliest states to mandate the use of paper ballots, which create a tangible record for use in recounts, to resolve disputes or to check suspicions of results being hacked.
</p><p>
The state also claims to be the first to adopt what's seen as the gold-standard for those checks: so-called risk-limiting audits, in which random samples of ballots are recounted until officials have statistical certainty the overall results are accurate — similar to the sampling used in public opinion polls.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://thefulcrum.us/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0Njk5NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODIzMTEzMH0.z-DBQn3K1Y_UA5sxgY9NfF4ddO487Ab99DNNkMwKWTY/image.png?width=980" id="6ddcf" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6aaddc9bbb58c0a010726853a0485591" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="New Mexico demographics">
</p><h3>A test case on voting by mail<br></h3><p>
March 10 changed everything in New Mexico, including elections.
</p><p>
On that Tuesday, the state Department of Health reported the first case of coronavirus in the New Mexico. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency the next day.
</p><p>
Three weeks later, 27 of the state's 33 county clerks, joined by Democratic Secretary of State Maggie Toulose Oliver, went to the state's highest court seeking permission to conduct the primaries mostly by mail. It was one of the earliest such efforts after the pandemic began, but their petition presciently labeled it a public health emergency "unprecedented in modern times."
</p><p>
(At that time there were about 200 Covid-19 cases in the state and two deaths. Totals at the end of last week were 28,000 cases and 859 deaths.)
</p><p>
April 14 marked another milestone in the state's 108-year history — the first time its Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a video conference call. After deliberating two hours, the justices rejected the idea of delivering mail-in ballots to all registered Republicans and Democrats and then restricting in-person voting.
</p><p>
State law is clear that absentee ballots may only be sent to people who request them, the court concluded, so the most the justices could (and did) do was order applications be sent to everyone registered and eligible to vote in the primary.
</p><p>
It was the kind of argument, and the sort of decision, that has subsequently played out in courtroom after courtroom, as officials and voting rights groups have sought to protect voters across the country from having to risk their health in order to cast their ballots — often in the face of laws that never anticipated a year when the electorate was being told to stay away from large gatherings, such as polling places, whenever possible.
</p><p>
The result has been the most litigated election ever. The
<a href="https://healthyelections.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Healthy Election Project</a>, a joint effort of MIT and Stanford, is tracking 300 cases — many of the most important among them yet to be decided or with the initial rulings under appeal. Many of the lawsuits are, like the trendsetting New Mexico case, focused on efforts by Democrats to ease limitations on absentee ballots. But plenty are also efforts by Republicans to make voting tougher.
</p><p>
State legislatures have also gotten into the act, with 49 states enacting 369 election-related laws this year, many related to voting by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That's a 43 percent increase from the roster of election-related laws enacted five years ago.
</p><p>
Governors have been major players as well. Seventeen of them delayed statewide or presidential primaries — and ordered second delays in Louisiana, Georgia, Connecticut and Delaware. An overlapping list of 17 decreed other changes, including ordering that all voters receive an absentee ballot or an application.
</p><h3>Perturbing primary problems</h3><p>
The primaries themselves were a mixed bag, with several raising concerns about whether safe and fair elections are possible this year given the pandemic persistence.
</p><p>
Contradictory and complex court rulings, in cases seeking mail-in easements and an outright delay, kept Wisconsin's April primary in limbo until the night before. Scores of poll workers, many elderly and at higher risk of viral infection, did not show. And the first big worries emerged about the Postal Service's ability to fulfill its newly vital election roll. The next big mess was in Georgia in June, when undelivered absentee ballots, a shrunken roster of polling places and brand new but balky voting machines produced hours-long lines at the polls. Later that month, a surge of mailed ballots in New York produced a several-week wait for the final result of two razor-close congressional contests.
</p><p>
The situation was not nearly so bad, but still bad enough, when the polls closed June 2 in New Mexico. Tabulators were overwhelmed and the reason was easy to identify: the record number — 246,000 — taking advantage of the applications they'd been sent and then returning completed ballots. Overall turnout was one-quarter more than for the presidential primary in 2016 and the share of ballots cast absentee increased almost tenfold — to 63 percent from 7 percent four years ago.
</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://thefulcrum.us/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0NzAxOC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0OTM4MDA4MX0.SHxd0vgSyS7LvT2grYC3aAHdM5SkUKGVkUIXSpUxWkE/image.png?width=980" id="3434f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="71307306350ab3c85473e5a117d94b08" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="How New Mexico voters cast ballots">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Source: New Mexico Secretary of State<a href="https://templates.flourish.studio/1642/ScgS3kHtHK96pv2vxFZZleOBrutOmFz5uNfRKFbVubuDoqTO5gDKnkokQ-iuJM08/?environment=editor&auto=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></small>
</p><p>
The top election official in Albuquerque sent his staff home before midnight and told them to finish tackling the envelopes in the morning. Poll workers in Santa Fe took three days to finish their count. And in the end 2,400 ballots statewide weren't counted because they arrived after the polls closed — a rejection rate, echoing the nationwide number in primaries this year, of 1 percent.<br>
</p><p>
Because primary turnout was the highest in almost three decades, even though Joe Biden had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination by that point, there looks to be another big burst in November — even though the former vice president is a near lock to carry the state's five electoral votes and color the state blue on the national map for the seventh time in eight elections. (Hillary Clinton won it last time by 8 points.)
</p><p>
The hottest race is in the one usually Republican congressional district, which covers the arid and sparsely populated southern half of the state. Democrat Xochitl Torres Small, who narrowly won in 2018, is in a tossup match against former GOP state legislator Yvette Herrell.
</p><h3>The legislators respond</h3><p>
Within days of the primary, the New Mexico Legislature was considering a bill to address some of the problems with the primary. The original bill by the majority Democrats would have allowed county clerks to proactively deliver ballots to everyone on their rolls in early October, ending the by-request-only rule. Republican legislators balked, echoing President Trump's persistent and baseless claim that so many ballots in circulation will guarantee election fraud.
</p><p>
That provision was abandoned, and instead a law enacted at the end of June permits clerks to mail applications for absentee ballots to all. Counties with two-thirds of the state's people are already planning to do that, and more are expected to join them.
</p><p>
The law also protects Native American voting rights by mandating that polling places on reservations may not be closed without written permission from tribal leaders.
</p><p>
"The Covid-19 crisis has created many challenges, but voting should not be one of them," said Democrat Linda Trujillo, a sponsor of the bill in the state House.
</p><h3>The fight goes postal</h3><p>
It's perhaps unsurprising that one of the most venerable institutions of the government, the Postal Service, is at the center of the next chapter of a saga that has swept away so much confidence in our most hallowed democratic institution, the election.
</p><p>
A Pew Research Center survey in March found 47 percent of Americans holding a "very favorable" view of the USPS, but an AP poll in September found just 34 percent with "great confidence" in the post office — a sharp 13-point drop in just six months. In between, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy became a household name and the face of the election integrity controversy.
</p><p>
Brand new on the job — without any previous postal experience, but with stock options in a Postal Service competitor and a long record of generous donations to Trump and the GOP — DeJoy launched an overhaul of the financially troubled USPS. It included moving out many in top leadership, several who had worked on election mail issues; banning overtime, including to handle election mail; and removing sorting equipment from some distribution centers.
<br>
</p><p>
In August, Democratic Attorney General Hector Balderas of New Mexico and the attorneys general of 22 other states filed three separate lawsuits to make DeJoy reverse those changes at least through the election. "The Postal Service is a vital lifeline for rural New Mexico, and this action threatens to disproportionately harm our Indigenous communities, from their daily living to their ability to participate in our democracy," Balderas said.
</p><p>
An important preliminary victory came a month later, on Sept. 17, when a federal judge in Washington state (ruling in the suit New Mexico had joined) temporarily blocked all of the operational and policy changes made by the Postal Service this summer.
</p><p>
"At the heart of DeJoy's and the Postal Service's actions is voter disenfranchisement," Judge Stanley Bastian wrote, concluding there's strong evidence "the recent changes are the result of an effort by the current administration to use the Postal Service as a tool in partisan politics."
</p><p>
At the same time the state was pressing its case against the Postal Service, however, New Mexico's elections director was expressing confidence in her working relationship with postal officials in the state.
</p><p>
One reason for optimism is another piece of the new elections law, which set an absentee ballot application cutoff nine days earlier than in the past. The new date is Oct. 20, a full week ahead of the post office's recommended deadline for getting completed ballots in the mail and being confident they'll arrive in time to be counted.
</p><p>
Like 32 other states, New Mexico law says envelopes that arrive after the polls close on Election Day must be tossed, although a series of court rulings have ordered deadline extensions in several swing states.
</p><h3>The latest, maybe not last, dispute</h3><p>
Another response to concerns about ballots delayed too long in the mail and not arriving in time has been to deploy more drop boxes. More than half the 2016 presidential votes in Colorado, Oregon and Washington — three states that conducted almost all elections remotely before the pandemic — were deposited in these secure canisters.
</p><p>
But like almost every other aspect of election arcana this year, this seemingly simple alternative has become embroiled in partisan controversy.
</p><p>
Trump has sued in federal court to block the planned use of drop boxes in battleground Pennsylvania, arguing they will invite fraud. GOP secretaries of state in reliably red Tennessee and Missouri decided against them, the former citing possible cheating and the latter saying they are against state law. Democrats have successfully sued to get more than one dropbox in each county in purplish Ohio, but the Republican in charge of the state's elections has appealed.
</p><p>
New Mexico is one of eight states with laws outlining how drop boxes may be used. Secretary of State Toulouse Oliver's office announced last week that several million dollars in federal election funds will be spent to install drop boxes across the state.
</p><p>
No one has sued to stop her — yet.
</p>
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President Trump and first lady Melania Trump pay their respects to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Thursday. The looming fight over her replacement threatens further damage to our democracy, writes Troiano.
Court fight warning: Break the doom loop or it will soon break us
Sep 25 2020
Troiano is executive director of Unite America, which promotes an array of electoral reforms and helps finance other advocacy organizations, and political candidates, with a commitment to cross-partisanship. (It is a donor to The Fulcrum.)
<p>The battle over the replacement for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg represents the next step, albeit a significant one, in a trend of political escalation that threatens the very foundation and functioning of our democracy.</p><p>Our political system is caught in a "doom loop" of partisanship and polarization, as both major parties trade long-term institutional stability for short-term political gain in what they rationalize as a fight for the soul of our country.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="75972298fd135799161a5644b2779411"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aRnK1lT-JkM?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How America's two-party doom loop is driving division</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRnK1lT-JkM&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
</small>
</p>
<p>If it continues, the doom loop will break our country in half — unless we act to break it first.<br></p><p>Both political parties have played a role in the ongoing tit for tat over judicial confirmations. In 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate, they invoked the "nuclear option" and eliminated filibusters against lower federal court nominees so they could be confirmed with slim party-line majorities. And the Republicans now in charge are set to up the ante by violating a precedent they set themselves four years ago with regard to considering Supreme Court nominations in presidential election years.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Should Republicans succeed in confirming a new justice this fall, Democrats will feel even more emboldened –– if they win control of the Senate and White House –– to pursue ideas some are already floating, from "packing the court" with additional, and likeminded, justices to packing the Senate itself by admitting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as reliably Democratic states. </p><p>Then, all bets would be off. </p><p>A Republican Party that retains a geographical and political advantage in both the Senate and the Electoral College could surely respond in kind in 2022 and 2024. Nothing, for example, forces the Senate to confirm any president's Supreme Court nominations. Nothing even forces Congress to fund the Supreme Court.</p><p>Ultimately, we can only have a democracy if some things matter more than winning power in it. The norm of political forbearance, as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explained in "How Democracies Die" (Crown, 2018), requires self-restraint on the exercise of political power even if one has the legal right to do so. "Democracies cannot work without it," <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/democracy-polarization.html" target="_blank">they write</a>. Nor can they long survive. </p><p>The doom loop will continue to spiral out of control, if not for the intervention of courageous leaders and different incentives.</p><p>The most immediate way to at least slow down the doom loop is for a group of at least eight senators –– four Democrats and four Republicans –– to join as a bloc that can effectively deny either party an outright majority on any norm-busting maneuvers moving forward. </p><p>Right now, that could mean: no one confirmed for the Supreme Court before the election, and no court packing after the election. In a new session starting next year, that could mean: new Senate rules that restore deliberation and compromise, including reforming rather than abolishing the filibuster. </p><p>The most effective way to actually break the doom loop, however, would be enacting nonpartisan reforms to our electoral system that can fundamentally change governing incentives by increasing political competition, participation and accountability.</p><p>Political scientist Lee Drutman, who coined the doom loop phrase, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/23/21075960/polarization-parties-ranked-choice-voting-proportional-representation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">explains</a>: "We are now in an era in which we have two truly distinct national parties, organized around two competing visions of national identity. It works against, not with our political institutions." </p><p>Over the last several decades, the two dominant parties have sorted themselves along clearly contrasting dividing lines –– demographically, geographically and ideologically. This stark set of binary splits has reinforced zero-sum politics, in which any kind of compromise is betrayal and the other side is not just wrong but evil. </p><p>Politicians have every incentive to raise the stakes even higher in order to get attention, raise campaign money and then win the votes to build their own political power, because most of them are largely insulated within their own parties and only face competition from their respective extremes.</p><p>The only way to change how our leaders behave is to change how they are elected.</p><p>For example, the most obvious and popular electoral reform, though far from the most powerful, is to end partisan gerrymandering –– thereby creating more competitive districts in which more voters will matter and voters can hold their leaders more accountable. Many states have already implemented independent redistricting commissions, and Congress could act to mandate their use nationally.</p><p>There are a range of other reforms –– from eliminating partisan primaries to implementing <a href="http://thefulcrum.us/ranked-choice-voting" target="_self">ranked-choice voting</a> –– that could have an even more powerful impact on the incentives of our leaders. While there is no silver bullet reform, any hope of de-escalating continuing political retribution will require politicians to reconsider how to achieve what is obviously most important to them: how they get elected.</p><p>The time for political reform is not after the next big fight; there will always be another to come. The time for reform is now. What hangs in the balance is not a single Supreme Court seat, but the legitimacy of our entire experiment of democratic self-governance.</p>
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President Trump refused Wednesday to say there would be a peaceful transition of power if he loses the election.
GOP pushback doesn't end suspicions about Trump and a peaceful transition
Sep 24 2020
President Trump's most recent refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election propelled several other prominent Republicans on Thursday to insist there will be a peaceful end to one administration and start of another come January, no matter who wins in November.
"There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792," vowed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who like the others in the party who spoke out still declined to identify Trump's alarming equivocation by name.
Beyond that, one of Trump's most overt threats yet to subvert a bedrock aspect of American democracy, should he lose in November, drew a whole range of responses and raised all manner of so-far unanswerable questions.
<p>To be precise about what Trump said Wednesday evening at a white House press briefing, here is the short exchange he had with Brian Karem of Playboy.</p><p>"Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?" the reporter asked. The president replied: "Well, we're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster."</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>"I understand that but people are rioting," Karem then said. "Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transferal of power?"</p><p>"We want to have, get rid of the ballots and we'll have a very peaceful — There won't be a transfer frankly, there'll be a continuation," Trump answered. "The ballots are out of control. You know it, and you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else."</p><p>None of the four newspapers with broad national circulation -- the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and USA Today — decided his comments merited front page coverage on Thursday. But the story did erupt across the Internet and on social media platforms, particularly Twitter.</p><p>The breakdown was predictable, with Democrats and democracy reform activists decrying Trump's comments in apocalyptic terms and a handful of Republicans seemingly disagreeing with Trump but in mostly tepid language and without naming the president.</p><p>"This is how democracy dies," tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who was the top prosecutor at Trump's impeachment trial. "A president so desperate to cling to power that he won't commit to a peaceful transition of power. That he seeks to throw out millions of votes. And a Republican Party too craven to say a word. But we will fight back. America belongs to the people." </p><p>Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination this year, tweeted that "members of all parties must condemn this open assault on our democracy. No context can excuse this. No talking points from the podium tomorrow can erase it. We are well past the point where partisanship must give way to patriotism." </p><p>Of greater interest was which senior congressional Republicans would say anything that even approached criticism of Trump. They included Mitt Romney of Utah, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rob Portman of Ohio from the Senate, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Steve Stivers of Ohio from the House.</p><p>"Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power," Romney said in the most forceful pushback. "Any suggestion that a president might not respect this constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable."</p><p>The rest were as restrained as McConnell, who also tweeted that "the winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th." Rubio, for example, promised that "as we have done for over two centuries we will have a legitimate & fair election. It may take longer than usual to know the outcome, but it will be a valid one."</p><p>Among the democracy reform groups, <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/directory/public-citizen" target="_self">Public Citizen</a> tweeted: "The president is openly and explicitly considering a coup to hold onto power. Make no mistake: Autocracy is at our doorstep."</p><p><a href="https://thefulcrum.us/directory/common-cause" target="_self">Common Cause</a> President Karen Hobert Flynn used Trump's words as a fundraising tool, urging supporters to help finance the group's "efforts for a legitimate, transparent, and trustworthy election this year.</p><h3>After reactions, questions</h3><p>All that rhetoric aside, Trump's comments raised the same three questions that often follow his most provocative declarations: What precisely did he mean, is the threat serious and how could he do what he's talking about?</p><p>Parsing the meaning of his words can be tough because the president makes so much news seemingly off the cuff, to reporters or on Twitter, and he can be imprecise if not self-contradictory. </p><p>In this case, "the ballots are a disaster" is presumably a reference to the many millions of additional absentee ballots this year because of the coronavirus pandemic — the subject of a steady barrage of statements and tweets since March in which Trump has asserted without evidence that widespread voting by mail will lead to widespread fraud.</p><p>And what about his statement that if we "get rid of the ballots" there won't be a transfer of power, just a continuation? This may reflect his often-stated view that without a surge of mailed votes he is sure to win a second term. But could it also be something new and dramatic — his advocating against tabulating mailed ballots.</p><p>If it's the latter, Trump and White House officials and campaign supporters may argue that his comments were obviously a joke or were being misinterpreted, as has often happened when his statements have been challenged.</p><p>Questioning the seriousness of his threats has provided steady work for Trump watchers. In May, Politico media writer Jack Schafer wrote that the president threatens "with the frequency other people take out the garbage" and then went on to <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/27/the-truth-at-the-center-of-trumps-hollow-threats-285044" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">review a litany</a> of the greatest hits of his hollow threats.</p><p>But a reason to take him seriously this time, other commentators have pointed out, is that this is not the first time Trump has said he may not give up power without a fight. </p><p>When he narrowly lost the first GOP nominating contest four years ago, for example, his evidence-free allegation about the Texas senator who prevailed was: "Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it." He claimed later in the 2016 campaign that the vote was sure to be rigged, and even after his upset victory in the Electoral College was secured he asserted without a shred of proof that the only reason he lost the popular vote was that at least 3 million illegal ballots had been cast for Hillary Clinton.</p><p>Chilling descriptions of how Trump might maneuver to hold power, no matter what the result in November, are being churned out with increasing frequency by journalists and election experts.</p><p>The Atlantic recently published <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one such account</a>. Since far more Democrats than Republicans are apparently planning to vote by mail, it says, when the first returns of people who voted in person are counted on election night they may well show Trump ahead in both the popular vote and Electoral College. If he continues his attack on the legitimacy of mailed ballots, he could create enough of a cloud of uncertainty that more than one slate of electors may be produced in closely contested states with decisive numbers of electoral votes — meaning the election ends up in the hands of Congress or the Supreme Court.</p><p>Election law professor Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-plan-supreme-court-stop-election-vote-count.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">made a similar argument</a> in a Slate article published Wednesday, titled: "I've Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now."</p><p>"The idea is to throw so much muck into the process," he wrote, "and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots, that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election."</p>
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