Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Something to celebrate: a safe election, so far

National Guard in Philadelphia

Members of the National Guard patrol in Philadelphia the morning after Election Day.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Election Day passed with remarkably little drama. After months of anxiety, that's a relief. Even better, there has been extraordinarily little violence or threat of violence to mar the election itself. Those of us concerned about political violence will now worry about the aftermath.


On the positive side: The evening before the election, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general declared illegal the department's deputization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and other DHS employees to Portland in August. The timing suggests the IG wanted to get the warning out before the election, to preclude the possibility of further Portland-like deployments in the post-election period. These are missions that could take DHS into territory that would appear partisan.

Similarly, Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York, from the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, asked DHS about any planned post-election deployments, requesting detailed understanding of rules of engagement, authorities, and plans. That the DHS inspector general and members of Congress felt the need to warn about unlawful activities is worrisome. That they did it anyway shows patriotism.

Meanwhile, our active duty military got in front of rumors with a highly unusual call this weekend to news anchors representing channels from across the political spectrum. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs reportedly told journalists in the off-the-record briefing that the active duty military would have no role in a transition of power.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The chief of the National Guard Bureau also explained to journalists that some units have already been activated at the behest of governors. Some soldiers worked without uniform, as normal poll volunteers, under strict National Guard guidelines. Others have been working to ensure cybersecurity of their states' elections.

Still others have been activated, in uniform, in case of civil unrest. Since uniformed military on U.S. streets can frighten some people, the National Guard needs to make sure the public understands their presence isn't a cause for alarm. Forces activated so far haven't been federalized. Under their governor's command they are fulfilling proper and normal missions. Should there be post-election unrest, the Guard generally backfills jobs like traffic control so local law enforcement can handle protests and counter-protests.

The U.S. military is highly respected for its apolitical, professional role, and it does not want to be politicized. They are well aware of laws that specifically prohibit interference in elections and vote counting, and want to stay well on the right side of those laws.

That does not mean we should remain sanguine. Governors may attempt to politicize the National Guard. But the Guard today is not what it was in the 1960s. While these citizen-soldiers come from their states and communities, most have been deployed in wars overseas, where they served under the professional norms of active-duty troops. We can hope they imbibed some of those nonpolitical norms. Meanwhile, Guard units' military police are trained in civil unrest, unlike many in local law enforcement. DHS may try to circumvent laws and the IG alert in ways that further tarnish its reputation. Doing so could make the public believe DHS serves a party, not a country. That would politicize its long-term survival.

Finally, the clear bad news is that the election has fallen into our expected, but worst-case scenario. It's a close call that may shift from red to blue, after the president has declared victory. It may take days to count all the ballots. It may take even longer to work through litigation challenging the counts. According to multiple polls, voters on both sides of the aisle expect their candidates to win, and they believe if their side loses, it will be because of fraud. That underlines the likelihood of protests and counter-protests.

If police can't deescalate protests, violence may grow. And for some politicians, such citizen-on-citizen violence could serve as an excuse to crack down with curfews and other tactics that are known to escalate situations. Such escalation tends to play into the hands of "strongmen" leaders, to whom citizens turn in the face of violence. We can hope it doesn't come to this.

There is a great deal to celebrate about the election. Despite all fears and prognostication to the contrary, a record number of Americans cast their votes peacefully and easily. And, thanks to early voting and mail-in voting, we even avoided the long lines that have become such a feature in recent elections. Let us hope that this good news can carry through to a potentially more confusing post-election period.

Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Read more from The Fulcrum's Election Dissection blog.

Read More

The election went remarkably well. Here's how to make the next one even better.
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

The election went remarkably well. Here's how to make the next one even better.

We haven't yet seen evidence that would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election — even with the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic, the threat of foreign interference, civil unrest and greater turnout than any time since 1900. That counts as a resounding success.

Once the final tallies are certified, we need to thank the election administrators and poll workers whose heroic efforts preserved American democracy. After that, we need to assess what worked best and what needs to improve, so we can identify achievable steps to make future elections even more secure.

Based on what we know so far, here are five things that should be on the U.S. elections to-do list:

Keep ReadingShow less
USA map with flags
FotografiaBasica/Getty Images

Distorted U.S. democracy underscores urgency of Electoral College reform

On Dec. 14, the Electoral College will cast its votes. Barring any unforeseen outrage, a majority will vote for Joe Biden, the popular vote winner in the general election, to sighs of relief. Many may conclude the creaky Electoral College works most of the time, and that any fixes are just too hard to worry about.

That would be a mistake.

Keep ReadingShow less
Georgia voting stickers
Stop the presses, says appeals court, even if that means longer Georgia voting lines
Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

The three steps to ensure a well-run runoff in Georgia

Hold the champagne: The 2020 Election Season isn't over just yet. Neither of Georgia's Senate races resulted in a victor on Election Day, sending both contests to January runoffs that will likely determine control of the U.S. Senate. And while many folks are understandably focused on the political repercussions of these races, I'm pulling for a different candidate: democracy.

While Georgia will likely conduct a risk-limiting audit and recount of the presidential election later this month, the state appears to have done a good job administering the 2020 presidential election. As a former election administrator and expert on the integrity of elections, my assessment is there is no reason to question the integrity of the election outcome. If any concrete evidence suggesting that wrongful disenfranchisement has or will affect the accuracy of the outcome, that assessment could change. Right now, there isn't.

Regardless, these are three steps Georgia officials could take now to ensure the integrity of the state's runoff elections in January:

Keep ReadingShow less
Even if it's not official, Republicans should acknowledge Biden's win

Even if it's not official, Republicans should acknowledge Biden's win

The nation has a new president-elect, Joe Biden. At the same time, there is no official president-elect, because the electoral process itself hasn't yet reached that point.

How can both these assertions be true? And if they are, how are Americans supposed to understand that? Most importantly, how can Americans of opposite parties get on the same page, so that we can move forward together as one country, as our new president-elect in his impressive victory speech is urging us to do?

When it comes to ending elections, there are actually two different processes at work, and they operate on different timelines.

Keep ReadingShow less
What's next for U.S. democracy after the president's stress test?
Jay Cross/Flickr

What's next for U.S. democracy after the president's stress test?

In another assessment of the 2020 vote so far, Election Dissection sat down with Laura Williamson, who works on voting rights and democracy at Demos. We spoke about President Trump's election night remarks as a stress test for the United States. Williamson had plenty to say about the state of the elections and some things that need fixing after the votes are finally counted.

What was your reaction to the president?

The president's remarks and actions are a test of our ability to show up, as a people, to mass mobilize and resist his authoritarian calls to end the counting. The basis of our democracy is that we pick our leaders. It's not the president or the courts that choose. So it's a test of our ability as a people to resist what is so clearly an anti-democratic attack.

And Americans are rising to the test. We're seeing masses of people calling for every vote to be counted. They're showing up and exercising their political power. We flexed our political power one way, by voting before or on Election Day. Now we're exercising it again in a different way — showing up in the streets and demanding every eligible vote is counted.

Keep ReadingShow less