This time Trump’s abuse of public trust is wounding democracy
How delusional can we Americans be? Hardly anything brings out the loony like a heated election, especially when our nation’s tweeter-in-chief stokes the fires with misinformation from the White House.
As President Donald Trump tweets unsupported claims of widespread “voter fraud” to justify his stubborn rebuffs of presumptive President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, a poll of voters before and after the election shows response to his claims falls right where it’s been through the campaign — along a stark partisan divide.
An eye-popping 70% of Republicans don’t believe the 2020 election was free or fair, according to a poll by Politico and Morning Consult, compared with only 35% who felt that way before Election Day.
Meanwhile some 90% of the opposite party, which has been dancing in the streets with joy over Biden’s victory, felt quite the opposite about the election’s fairness, up from only 52% who expressed such expectations before.
I know polling has taken quite a beating from a frustrated public. But, as those problems are being addressed, public surveys are still useful in revealing broad trends such as rise of public suspicions and the collapse of public trust.
Signs of trust in elections rising and falling according to whose side wins should be no big surprise. But a bigger problem comes when, for example, a president leads his (or someday her) supporters to fan understandable disappointment into full-blown conspiracy theories.
Yes, I’m thinking of Trump holding up the transition process — including necessary briefings for Biden’s incoming national security and pandemic-fighting teams — as a virtual hostage while filing lawsuits and lobbing tweets of doubt.
Voter fraud is not a plaything. Having learned quite a bit about the topic as a young Chicago Tribune reporter, in a town that made the phrase “vote early and often” legendary, I take the charge very seriously.
And as an African American, mindful of how phony voter fraud charges have been used at various times since Reconstruction to suppress the Black vote, I take such shenanigans even more seriously.
So I don’t disagree with those who say the president, regardless of party, has a right to have such suspected skulduggery fully investigated. But that right should not be abused because public trust can be damaged and even more suspicions raised.
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