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It’s 2024, and in the United States, political advertising budgets have been spent, babies have been kissed (or, in some cases, bitten by the sitting president), the candidates and their supporters have exhausted their arsenals of mutual verbal abuse, and the voters have finally made their decisions. Now the hard part begins.

Wait. Now does the hard part begin? But campaign season is over!

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Yes, but Americans don’t really like each other, don’t trust each other, and have at best only middling faith in the vote-counting process. They are increasingly inclined to break heads to resolve differences. So, the easy part is over. Now the hard part begins.

“As Election Day approaches, many registered voters are quite concerned about the integrity of the vote and what will happen after the election,” according to an AP-NORC poll. posted last week. “Nearly a quarter of registered voters expect inaccuracies in vote counts across the country, and many fear post-election political violence.”

Inaccuracies in vote counting are inevitable, although they usually remain a dull roar and people tolerate occasional glitches and rare examples of fraud. But that is what is expected in an environment of trust, which is no longer what we have. Heading into this election, after years of disputes over voter identification, early voting and who can be trusted to count ballots, only about 60 percent of voters have faith in the accuracy of the vote in the elections. state and local elections. information AP-NORC. Only 48 percent trust the national results.

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Voters, those who did not mail in their ballots, went to the polls amid news about a student from China who does not have U.S. citizenship. faces charges for voting illegally in Michigan. And Maricopa County, in the swing state of Arizona, warns that it could take two weeks to compile a vote count. These reports do not resolve people’s concerns.

Given the unimpressive level of trust in democratic procedures, it is not surprising that many Americans consider the country’s system of government to be shaky at best. In March, 81 percent of those surveyed by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Civility Survey on the Battlefield He said, “they believe that democracy in the United States is currently threatened.”

Who threatens? This wouldn’t be America if we weren’t pointing fingers at each other. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats told Georgetown pollsters that “MAGA Republicans” are an “extremely” or “very” serious “threat to democracy.” Sixty-nine percent of Republicans said the same about the “radical left.” Large majorities of both groups described the other’s representatives in Congress as a “threat to democracy.”

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If you face a threat to the country’s political system, what do you do to confront it? Well, becoming part of the problem is certainly on the table for a sizable minority of Americans. one April PBS NewsHour/NPR/Maris The survey found that 20 percent of respondents insisted that “they may have to resort to violence to get the country back on track.” That included 12 percent of Democrats, 18 percent of independents and 28 percent of Republicans.

There are signs that some of this may become self-fulfilling. When the Deseret News partnered with HarrisX pollsters in August to asks Americans about political violence83 percent of Democrats said they feared “violence from Republicans who do not accept the election results if Vice President Harris wins,” while 76 percent of Republicans said they expected that reaction from Democrats if she won. Trump.

Last week, in a follow-up survey of Utahns by the Deseret News and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, 46 percent of self-identified Republicans and 38 percent of self-identified Democrats said anti-government violence could be justified (for those actually registered as members of both parties: 52 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans considered violence justifiable). Presumably, they were referring to the moment when opponents seize power.

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Unfortunately, there are precedents. Donald Trump’s supporters famously rioted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, after their candidate lost his re-election bid. However, it is sometimes overlooked that Trump’s opponents rioted in Washington, DC at his 2017 inauguration.

Politically motivated violence has become all too common as people exchange punches, firebombs and bullets over partisan disagreements. Offices and urns to deposit the ballots have been repeatedly burned. Last week an Arizona man was accused of shooting In a Kamala Harris campaign office, fists have been thrown at each other in recent days people with campaign paraphernalia either objecting to his presence. Donald Trump was targeted by two would-be assassins, the first of whom drew blood.

“In less than a decade, violence has become a surprisingly common feature of American political life,” said Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats. wrote in September. “In fact, November’s election may well be not only the most consequential in modern American history, but also the most dangerous.”

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Pape believes the tensions are a result of the United States’ transition to a multiracial democracy and the country’s difficulty in accepting that evolution. Martín Gurri, author of The public revolt and the crisis of authority in the new millenniumInstead, he believes that it is a battle between “Norms and elites.” by the democratization of information on the Internet and the loss of status and control power by those who once comfortably exercised control.

I will add that we have done There is a lot at stake in politics.. When the state intrudes into all areas of life and seeks to exercise veto power over personal decisions and important values, it is understandable that people come to believe that elections are too important to lose. A smaller decentralized government would reduce conflict by giving us less to fight about.

Whether for those reasons – or for some other explanation – the elections in the United States are now exhausting and dangerous. Election workers shield your offices and sign up for “active shooter” drills. American voters are preparing to fight each other over who will torment their opponents in elected office.

The 2024 political campaign may be over, but we must still hope for a peaceful conclusion to our deep and endless political disputes.

National Mail

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