Editor’s note: This commentary is by Spencer Putnam, of Weybridge, who has been a life-long political, social justice, and climate activist. He is a former executive director of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility.
Will this year’s election be settled at the ballot box, in the streets, or in the courts?
Serious questions are being raised about whether or not there will be a peaceful transfer of power should Donald Trump lose the 2020 election.
In a Sept. 16 interview with David Goodman, Rep. Peter Welch said: “We have a president who does not believe in democracy and is doing everything he can to erode it and kill it.”
On the same day, Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote his constituents, stating “now, for the first time, we are facing an election where it is not clear that a sitting president will voluntarily leave office if he loses.”
In a Sept. 3 New York Times commentary, David Brooks suggested that President Trump would seize on favorable Election Day returns to declare victory and then challenge the legitimacy of late returns from mail-in balloting if they threaten to change the outcome.
George Lakey, a longtime leader of peaceful direct-action campaigns for social and climate justice, is urging Americans to prepare to resist a coup.
Not since the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush has the United States had a seriously contested election. Are we facing a reprise of the 2000 election chaos and controversy in 2020 … or worse? That outcome was not settled until five weeks after Election Day, following recounts, disputed ballots, legal challenges, demonstrations, and finally intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since before the 2016 election, Donald Trump has been challenging the legitimacy of our electoral process, and the intensity of his criticisms has increased in the lead-up to this year’s election. The Trump-appointed Postmaster General has taken several actions to undermine the Postal Service, so critical to the voting process during this pandemic year. Voting by mail is also expected to slow down ballot counting. Vote totals for the presidential election, as well as many key Senate and House contests, may not be available for days or even weeks. Trump has refused to commit to accepting electoral defeat.
In a Nov. 16, 2018 article in The Nation Jane McAlevey argued that the Democrats made a fatal mistake in 2000 by relying solely on a legal defense instead of rallying public opinion to their side. The Republicans had a crack legal team to engage the Democrats in court, but they also mounted a public relations campaign to convince the American people that Bush was the legitimate winner in Florida and therefore of the presidency.
They also organized a public demonstration which has become known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. With near violent tactics, Republican actors forced the Board of Elections of Miami-Dade County to a premature shutdown of its recount. The threat of street violence helped to convince the Supreme Court that it needed to intervene before the situation got out of control.
In his Sept. 3 column Brooks laid out a scenario for Election Day which could lead to a similar result. He cites an August poll by the Democracy Fund + the UCLA Nationscape project which showed that 37% of registered voters planned to vote by mail, and that voters who planned to vote for Biden were more than twice as likely to vote by mail than voters who would choose Trump.
Brooks also suggests that early returns, especially in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which don’t begin processing votes until Election Day, will show Trump in the lead. According to Brooks, Trump and many other Republican candidates will declare victory on election night. If Republican leads begin to erode as late returns are reported, Trump will begin “raging about fraud.” Lawsuits will spring up all over the country.
Looking back at the experience in Florida in 2000 it is easy to imagine citizens from both sides taking to the streets to put pressure on authorities to end this year’s election controversy. In an Aug. 27 article in “Waging Nonviolence” magazine George Lakey urges Americans to prepare a nonviolent resistance campaign to blunt any attempt to overturn the results of the election.
Citing political scientist Stephen Zune, Lakey gives examples of mass action in eight countries which defeated coup attempts. Nonviolent resistance is key, Zune asserts, to winning over people in the political center, who are likely to be repelled by violence. More information about resisting a stolen election is at https://choosedemocracy.us/.
We should all be making a plan for what we will do in the days and weeks after the election to preserve our democracy.
