The dimensions of election integrity

Kirk Ericson | Jul 07, 20220

After the man asked his question, some folks snickered. The snickers came from many of the nearly 40 people assembled in the Mason County Commission Chambers last Wednesday for a county-sponsored session titled “Election Observer Training.”

The man had asked Marie Stevenson, the county’s election superintendent, whether election workers could get away with, say, dumping ballots in the woods after retrieving them from one of the county’s election drop boxes. She said no and then spoke of the redundant mechanisms in place to deter and discover such an act.

A bit later, another fellow in the crowd had a rhetorical question for that man: What would be the point of dumping those ballots? It’s a crime, and you couldn’t be sure, without breaking the seals, that the dumped ballots contained votes for or against your candidate. The man didn’t respond.

The man who asked the dumping question had another question a bit later. The room tensed, suspecting he was about to release another phantom into the ether. In the 2020 election, the man said, his wife had filled her ballot, and signed and dated it. But she died before delivering it.

The room went still.

The man said he struggled with whether it was ethical to drop off his wife’s ballot. He said he did deliver it, but he still wondered whether it was right. Stevenson replied that as long as his wife signed and dated it before she died, it was OK.

We create caricatures of people we disagree with, regardless of our political drift. Our current state of politics demands it. The left turns people who disagree with its orthodoxy into versions of Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell, and the right turns its opponents into Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi. Before this man mentioned his wife, he was probably a stand-in — for many in the room — of all the people who have embraced a former president’s fantasies.

The man likely was far more complicated than his election suspicions. It gave me hope, as did knowing the crowd that showed up last Wednesday in the commission chambers was one of the largest groups to attend a county election observer training.

The attacks on our elections are drawing defenders to the battlements.

Ensuring that election results are considered legitimate — when they have been proven to be legitimate in all the legitimate ways humans have concocted to prove legitimacy — is fundamental to holding this nation together. Fictions designed to undermine that legitimacy are as sinful as any sin.

The erosion of faith in election results works something like this: Mr. X suspects his neighbor Mrs. Y is putting laxatives into her Greek potato salad at the church potlucks. Mr. X doesn’t have hard evidence — he has “theories” — but Mr. X has suspicions because two people got the urps after the last potluck.

“It makes you wonder,” Mr. X says.

Mr. X gets more people to buy into the laxative theory, others embellish the accusation, and then Mrs. Y and her Greek potato salad end up alone on a park bench.

Then we reach a state of purified hypocrisy when the people who believe or promote the potato salad theory proclaim, “I’m just saying people seem to have lost faith in the integrity of her potato salad” — ignoring their own role in making people lose faith in Mrs. Y’s potato salad.

Or they use code phrases like, “we’re only ensuring the integrity of the potato salad” or “we want to return potato salad to the people” — like potato salad has been removed from the people.

Who can you believe?

Here’s a start. Consider what people have to lose or gain through their words or actions.

We have several amendments to the Constitution that address voting. We have generations of case law that govern the fair and proper administration of elections and voting rolls. We have criminal penalties for violating voting laws. Election workers, including people like this county’s election superintendent, can lose their jobs and be imprisoned for violating election laws.

Little to gain, lots to lose.

Then we have people who can make claims on TV, on the internet and on the campaign trail with little fear of legal consequence. Stating or even insinuating a belief in election humbuggery can yield money and power, and get you elected.

Lots to gain, little to lose.

People who use the term “election integrity” as code for the “2020 election was a fraud,” undermine election integrity just as surely as someone who votes or registers illegally, or tampers with ballots.

If you’re interested in being an election observer for the upcoming primary and general elections, go to the Mason County Auditor’s page, click “Elections” and then “Observers.” It will tell you how you can observe by camera or in person.

“Ballots are sacred,” Stevenson told the assembled last week.

Amen.