Democratic Capacity: Election Administration as Bulwark and Target

Abstract

Headlines decried the fragility of American democracy during the 2020 elections, but extensive institutional structures steered officials in both political parties to certify the results of the election, and independent judges have validated their decisions. Political battles over election laws and procedures are not themselves signs of democracy’s demise, because legal and administrative guardrails contain the degree to which voting rights are threatened. These formidable institutional structures blunted former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and limited the scope and impact of new state legislation to restrict access to voting. The guardrails of elections operated as designed, but Trump’s unfounded charges of fraud coupled with state restrictions are corroding the credibility and fairness of elections. We examine the scope and function of election law and administration to understand how they protected American democracy in the contentious 2020 election.

The Crisis of American Democracy in Historical Context

“…Numerous studies over the past several years find negligible instances of fraud (Cassidy 2021; Kamarck and Stenglein 2020; Minnite 2010). Indeed, Americans should feel proud of their system of elections (Jacobs and Choate 2022).…”

“…A majority of the former president’s party continues to believe his “Big Lie”: that the election was stolen and the current president is fraudulent (Blake 2024). The country’s election infrastructure, which proved extremely resilient under historically stressful conditions in 2020, has come under sustained assault; numerous states have sought to adopt newly restrictive voting rules and to politicize election administration, thereby softening the basic presumption of free and fair elections that underlies contemporary American democracy (Bateman, Lieberman, and Childree, forthcoming; Jacobs and Choate 2022). It is tempting to dismiss January 6th as a singular event without precedent in American political history and to fall back on its aftermath: a transfer of power continuing an unbroken string stretching back nearly two and a half centuries.…”