Teetering on the Brink 

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I don't know about you, but I'm holding my breath.

Unlike most of the nation's 246-year history, it is very likely that even two days after the polls close—the day this opinion column goes to press—Americans will still face uncertainty on who won in the midterm elections.

With so many truly awful players for candidates—especially the ones with the word "insurrection" on their lips—this may have been the most important election ever. The very foundations of our democracy hang in the balance, particularly the most important mandate—that each person gets to vote and that each vote will be counted.

Elections—once simple, slam-dunk, let-the-people-be-heard contests—have changed to a tedious and confusing process. I remember when Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency. The next morning's headlines were very clear. Ike had won.

Today, thanks to Trump's shocking absence of integrity, an election is destined to be litigated ad infinitum through counting, re-counting, challenging the results, filing frivolous lawsuits and employing snail-paced bad sportsmanship to keep Americans in limbo for a painful, protracted ordeal. Even worse, there were a shocking number of candidates who stated that they, like the Pillsbury MAGA-Man, might not accept any unfavorable outcome.

If, in the end, we see the simple act of courteous concession by the losers, maybe the rigmarole won't be so bad. But today we must worry that the pathetic would-be winners will find ways to disrupt our government, just because no one ever taught them that there is grace and honor in politely submitting to the confirmed election results.

Sadly, this is part of the Trump legacy. We were aghast when The Donald first used the words "fake news." Even for those Americans who had previously believed that an informed public was the greatest assurance for protecting the vision of the Founding Fathers, the fake news message forced everyone—not just the uneducated and naïve—to question the veracity of media reporting. So, it turns out, the tainted, fact-spinning media coverage turned even some of the most devout citizens into cynics.

While the "fake news" assertions were the predictable spawn of a colossal liar, desperately trying to avoid responsibility and consequences, there was just a bit of truth in Trump's claims. The reality is that not everything we read or hear, even from the most trusted sources, is guaranteed to be true and complete.

It doesn't matter that almost all the "fake news" of the past few years has centered on the misdeeds of Trump. Though Trump's behavior, both in his personal and business life, gave the press more than enough truly disgusting things to report about, his cries of "foul" also called our attention to weaknesses in the way Americans acquire knowledge about their country, their countrymen and the issues we all face.

Now we're seeing more repercussions of Trump's "fake news" campaign. The allegations of false information sources have spilled over into Americans' trust in the election process itself. Now it's about so much more than a despot ducking his bad behavior. It has transformed the trusting into "Doubting Thomases."

It doesn't matter that recent elections, even after numerous investigations and court challenges, have proven reliable. Somehow, the assurances have not put all minds at ease.

While elections should be simply a quantitative summation of current voter preferences, they've evolved into something very different. The years of streamlining and perfecting the election system have turned abruptly around. In a sense, we've taken the highly-refined election process—one that has worked well because refinements have allowed more people the convenience of a variety of ways to cast a ballot—and turned it into a fiasco.

Now, we have a major party that has attacked the integrity and precision of the system. Even after acknowledging a few errors and even a vote or two which may have been cast illegally, it is ludicrous to send the project back to the prehistoric drawing board. All the progress made, aimed at facilitating voting and speeding up the final counts, are facing a political guillotine.

For that small group of militant Republican outliers, the metamorphosis of our election system has been targeted to either imply or declare that the system is less than reliable and that it's highly vulnerable to manipulation by the unethical.

The system was good enough, after almost a quarter-millennium, to pass muster for both the voters and the candidates. Today, Americans' faith in elections has sunken to an all-time low.

Whatever candidates are certified in this latest election, the road ahead will be treacherous at best.

At the center of our discomfort should be the upcoming Supreme Court's hearing on Moore v Harper. It may well decide whether the American democratic experiment has totally disintegrated. The wrong SCOTUS decision, if rendered—giving individual states broad authority over the election process—could result in state-sanctioned manipulation of election results. It's scary. No real American believes that state leaders should be able to replace the will of their people.

That should make us all shake in our boots.

An assault on our election system is an assault on America, and that must not be placed in the hands of any court. Self-determination and fair elections are the only value, and we must never allow individual states the power to corrupt the election process.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol, and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog