Why we must avoid temptations to call lost elections ‘rigged’

Elwood works with Builders, a nonpartisan organization aimed at overcoming toxic polarization, and is the author of “Defusing American Anger.”

Shortly before the 2020 election, a survey found that many Americans — including many Republicans and Democrats — were prepared to view the election as “rigged” if their candidate lost. One of the survey creators said the results were, “in a word, extreme.”

The stability of a democratic republic like ours depends on widespread trust in and acceptance of election results. Without this, things start to fall apart. Political dysfunction can give way to chaos, constitutional crises and even significant political violence.

We must see that when we call elections “illegitimate” without very good reasons, we hurt America.

Whether you’re more upset about Donald Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen or by Democrats calling Trump’s 2016 win illegitimate due to Russian influence, I hope you’re willing to consider, for America’s sake, how we can be drawn to distrusting elections for weak reasons.

Both political sides have been pulled into the winner-loser gap, which refers to the tendency of those whose group loses an election to have more election distrust than the winners. Regardless of which political group you think is more unreasonable in this regard, it’s possible to see that this dynamic is present for people across the political spectrum.

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In “Election Meltdown,” Richard Hasen examines instances of Trump making false and misleading statements promoting the idea the 2020 election was stolen. He also examines examples on the left, such as Hillary Clinton blaming her 2016 loss in Wisconsin on Republicans passing voter ID legislation, despite a lack of clear evidence to support that claim.

When we dislike and fear the “other side,” it’s easy to believe they’re up to something dishonest, even when we don’t have good evidence for that. Among people who said they thought the 2020 election was stolen, a 2023 study found about half of them weren’t fully convinced of that. Our partisan hostility and suspicion can lead to expressions of election distrust even in the absence of certainty.

Some people may distrust an election because they think bad and biased actors have influenced the vote. For example, some Republicans will cite biased liberal-leaning media among reasons they see the 2020 election as illegitimate.

Leading up to the 2016 election, there were many fake pro-Trump news sites, domestic and foreign, that many thought unfairly shifted the election. Republicans presumably would dislike it if Democrats used such instances as reasons to call Trump’s 2016 win illegitimate. The truth is it’s always possible for people to see biased media as unfairly influencing views, making that a weak reason to call an election “rigged.”

Some people saw Trump’s 2016 win as illegitimate due to thinking Russia influenced the election — but there’s no strong evidence Russia succeeded at that. Various analysts have made the case that Russia’s efforts were minor compared to other political activity. Also, a 2023 study found no evidence that exposure to the Russian campaign had led to “changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”

Foreign powers who meddle in our elections are trying to foster discord and chaos. We should avoid playing into our enemies’ hands by too readily calling elections illegitimate.

In any given election, there’ll be various mistakes, technical issues and biased decisions — and even some genuine fraud. This means it’s easy for people to seize on irregularities as reasons to distrust an election’s result.

In “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” Mollie Hemingway argued the 2020 election was stolen. A Wall Street Journal review criticized her for conflating minor and expected election Iissues with purposeful fraud.

One reason some Democrats have viewed elections as illegitimate is because they think Republicans have suppressed votes in undemocratic ways. One prominent example of this was the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, where Democrats saw Republicans making it harder to vote as causing a Democratic loss.

In “Why Democrats Should Not Call the Georgia Governor’s Race ‘Stolen’,” Hasen argued that a political group that loses an election should accept the results even when they think an election was not conducted perfectly, and that it’s important to distinguish between legal actions and illegal activity (like fraud).

In America, there’s a tension between the demand for easy voting and concerns about election integrity. We can see how this tension makes it easy for changes to election policy to produce distrust and frustration. But calling an election “illegitimate” without very strong reasons raises the partisan temperature and harms the democratic institutions that make America tick.

If you believe a recent election was illegitimate, this short piece almost certainly didn’t address all your concerns. I do hope that this helps you see the importance of thinking more about our tendency to distrust elections. If we care about this country, we must work against overly pessimistic views — both in ourselves and among our political peers.

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