Opinion | Imagine Its 2024, and Republicans Are Declaring Trump President – The New York Times

None of that, however, was sufficient to persuade tens of millions of Trump voters that their candidate actually lost. On the contrary: When forced to choose between President Trumps baseless assertions and the conclusions of those Republicans duly charged with overseeing the election, these voters chose Mr. Trump over members of their own party who acted with integrity. The rioters on Jan. 6 turned to violence because they believed that the election was stolen, and they believed that despite all the authorities, Democrats and Republicans, actually responsible for running it saying otherwise.

Thats not a problem that can be solved by tinkering with the mechanics of elections oversight. Its entirely possible that worthwhile reforms to limit political grandstanding could fuel distrust by Democrats in the legitimacy of elections.

Take the Electoral Count Act, a particular focus of concern because of John Eastmans memo suggesting, absurdly, that it granted Vice President Mike Pence the authority to unilaterally set aside certified electoral votes. The act was originally passed to prevent a repeat of the disputed election of 1876, during which Congress previously responsible for resolving such disputes deadlocked over which electors to approve from three states that submitted dueling slates. The act reduced Congresss role and aimed to provide clear rules for how and when states must approve their slates to avoid disputes.

Those provisions can and should be clarified, to eliminate the possibility that a future vice president might do what Mike Pence refused to, or that future representatives and senators could baselessly undermine popular confidence in election integrity as numerous Republicans have done in the wake of the last election.

But what any such reform would do is push more authority back down to the state level or over to the judicial branch. What happens if those actors behave in a corruptly partisan manner? With key state legislatures in Republican hands and with the Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees inclined to give latitude to those same state legislatures in setting electoral rules, its not hard to imagine many Democrats in 2024 concluding that by reforming the act they had disarmed themselves.

Some Democrats, therefore, have called for federalizing Americas unusually decentralized national elections, to override the possibility of partisan state legislature interference in either the conduct of the election or the vote count and certification of the winners. Because the Constitution vests a great deal of authority at the state level, some of these proposals might well face constitutional challenges but even if they passed muster, what would they achieve? They would invest more power in Congress, which might well be in Republican hands. How confident would Democrats be in an election in 2024 ultimately overseen by Kevin McCarthy in the House and Mitch McConnell in the Senate?

Nor would investing that power in another state-level authority be assured to fare better. After the 2020 election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, was a hero for refusing to compromise his integrity. But in the 2000 election, the independent authority responsible for running the election in Florida was Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican who was widely distrusted by Democrats for what they saw as favoritism to George W. Bush. This distrust was a mirror of Republicans own distrust of the recount process as conducted in a number of Democratically controlled counties in South Florida. It was distrust all the way up and all the way down. It ended only because Al Gore accepted the authority of the Supreme Court.

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Opinion | Imagine Its 2024, and Republicans Are Declaring Trump President - The New York Times