Are U.S. Elections Fair and Secure – No!

Ground-up audits, judicial reviews and academic studies have shown rather conclusively that elections in the United States are remarkably fraud free. But that does not mean that elections here are not manipulated and rigged, even when you exclude all the noise from the extra-territorial hacking and disinformation efforts of countries like Russia. Indeed, the very structures of government, accepted as legitimate, have slowly created a distorted system that, following the most recent Census reports, might become the least representative from of government this nation has ever known. Minorities (particularly people of color) and cities are growing, white populations and rural inhabitants are contracting. These recently reported Census facts seem to be nothing more than a call to arms by the incumbent white traditionalists, which control over two-thirds of the state houses that have direct control of redistricting, to restrict further.

But even before this Census report, a continuing Harvard University statistical study (Electoral Integrity Project – EIP) of our election processes sets forth in hard facts what most of us already know. Their most recent report, released days before the January 6th assault on the Capitol, examined the November vote and suggests three key findings:

1. Election experts overwhelmingly rejected claims of widespread fraud occurring in their state during the balloting and vote tabulation stages of the 2020 U.S. elections. These assessments are fully consistent with evidence from the courts and the series of reports by state officials, federal agencies, and other authoritative sources.

2. At the same time, this does not imply that experts believe that the performance of all stages in the 2020 American elections should be given a clean bill of health. Many commentators have been too quick to assume that if claims of voter fraud are baseless, and turnout rose, then other stages of the contest are likely to have worked equally well across all states. But election experts identified a series of structural problems undermining American democracy. As repeatedly highlighted in previous EIP reports, these include: Electoral laws and gerrymandered districts favoring incumbents; campaign coverage by local press and TV news lacking fairness and balance while social media amplified misinformation; campaign finance lacking transparency and equitable access; communities of color experiencing difficulties in registering and voting; women and minorities candidates encountering barriers to elected office; and, the declaration of results generating lengthy disputes. At the same time, several strengths in the electoral process were also identified, namely: the fair and efficient management of electoral procedures and voting processes, and the professional performance of electoral authorities.

3. Finally, expert assessments also indicate that compared with 2016, the performance of this contest displays several warning flags, namely worsening confidence in the integrity of American elections and falling public trust, challenges to legitimacy arising from threats of campaign violence, legal disputes about the process and results, and public protests about the outcome, as well as growing attempts at voter suppression. Some of the worst fears of foreign meddling and outright violence did not materialize during the election and its immediate aftermath, although these potential risks persist.

Then came January 6th. Voter suppression from literally 400 bills introduced in state legislatures across the land after the November election, to exclude likely anti-populist/GOP voters, finding serious traction is most red states, is about to take a back seat to partisan redistricting. Panic in the red states, ready to marginalize opposing voters by segregating them into a few limited pockets where absolutely necessary and configuring districts to dilute such votes, mostly urban, within vast pools of neighboring rural voters: Classic gerrymandering, with us since the earliest days of our republic but perfected in modern America, mostly by Republican legislatures. 

The above graphic example, shows the evolution of redistricting in Travis County Texas, aimed at neutralizing its very blue county seat (and home to Texas’ capital), Austin. By reaching well into the hinterland, Texas managed to turn that bright blue city into five congressional districts: one focused well within city limits being very bright blue, and four reaching deeply into the surrounding areas, giving very blue Austin four very red congressional districts.

Political scientists all over the world are fascinated at this rather rapid, self-inflicted American move to disenfranchise voters, most minorities likely to vote Democratic, using apparently legally supported election laws. The UK’s Guardian (August 13th), using the above Harvard report, noted that US practices mirror parallel practices in clearly undemocratic nations around the world: 

“Representative democracy has been broken for the past decade in places like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. When Republican lawmakers redistricted these states after the 2010 census, with the benefit of precise, granular voting data and the most sophisticated mapping software ever, they gerrymandered themselves into advantages that have held firm for the last decade – even when Democratic candidates win hundreds of thousands more statewide votes.

“In Wisconsin, for example, voters handed Democrats every statewide race in 2018 and 203,000 more votes for the state assembly – but the tilted Republican map handed Republicans 63 of the 99 seats nevertheless. Democratic candidates have won more or nearly the same number of votes for Michigan’s state house for the last decade – but never once captured a majority of seats…

“In [Harvard’s] most recent study of the 2020 elections, the integrity of Wisconsin’s electoral boundaries earned a 23 – worst in the nation, on par with Jordan, Bahrain and the Congo… Why is Wisconsin so bad? Consider that, among other things, it’s a swing-state that helped decide the 2016 election. Control the outcome in Wisconsin, and you could control the nation. But Wisconsin isn’t the only democracy desert. Alabama (31), North Carolina (32), Michigan (37), Ohio (33), Texas (35), Florida (37) and Georgia (39) scored only marginally higher. Nations that join them in the 30s include Hungary, Turkey and Syria.” The sacrificial lambs: minority voting rights.

Indeed, Americans who once trusted the U.S. Supreme Court to protect those minority voting rights have been slammed by two recent cases, the 2013 Shelby County vs Holder – effectively eviscerating the most protective sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – and the July ruling in Brnovich vs. Democratic National Committee, which told us that statutes that may result in a discriminatory exclusion of voters are still valid as long as they do not directly require such discriminatory result in their actual wording. 

This reality combined with the massive red state lurch to draft new exclusionary districts to prevent the clear Census-illustrated shift to the kinds of voters unlikely to support GOP candidates augur badly for American democracy. Unless the U.S. Senate is willing to amend its filibuster rules, at least as to voting rights, the only effective response to maximize true voting rights will remain stalled in that legislative body. We might soon move from the prestigious British periodical’s, The Economist’s, description of the United States as a “flawed democracy” to one where the word “democracy” is completely eliminated preceded by the word “sham.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and there the risk to ending this nation in its entirety should give sufficient pause to those seeking power and control at any cost… but apparently it does not.