The Legitimacy of the 2024 Presidential Election
What is the logical consequence of roughly half the country not believing the results of the election regardless of the results?
I’m not going to sit here and point out the myriad issues already relating to the election tomorrow, from malfunctioning voting machines to states openly saying that it will take them days if not longer to do the simple task of counting votes in the most technologically advanced country on Earth, to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the election. No, the point I want to make is more straight-forward than that. No matter which candidate is declared the winner of the election, the other candidate’s voters will largely not believe the results. In other words, tens of millions of Americans will believe that the election was stolen, right or wrong. What do you think that mean for the legitimacy of the United States federal government?
As we all know, Donald Trump refuses to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election where Joe Biden was declared the winner, and the Democratic Party has not accepted Republicans being declared the winner of a single presidential election in this millennium. I think there is a high probability that this election will be the breaking point for all of that tension that has been building for decades.
I’m not writing this post to cast blame on any political party or particular politician; we’re all too blame to some degree. I believe that the centralization of power in Washington, D.C. is the chief problem, the more powerful the U.S. federal government becomes the less acceptable it becomes to lose an election. But the truth is that we have a sick culture where we, in general, want to use the power of the government to impose our views on one another, and we no longer view each other as neighbors or fellow countrymen but as people we want to dominate so that they can’t dominate us. We can’t even have real conversations about politics with people, because we feel like we have to talk in slogans like the politicians we support as if we ourselves are running for office or are working for a political campaign. As if openly admitting that we don’t agree on everything, or even most things, with the candidate we’re choosing to vote will somehow hurt their chances to win or that admitting their flaws somehow means their flaws are our flaws.
Whatever the case may be, if Donald Trump wins this election, Kamala Harris voters will never believe that he didn’t steal the election in some way. And, vice versa, if Kamala Harris wins this election, Donald Trump supporters will never believe that she didn’t steal the election in some way. Either way, roughly half the country will believe that the people ruling over them stole the election and have no right to govern. We’ve had political violence in this country before, including a civil war, but I’m afraid that there’s a decent chance that this election, regardless of the results, will bring about a wave of political violence in this country that few of us have seen in our lifetimes. I voted for Donald Trump because I would rather that he be the president than Kamala Harris, but I don’t think that what comes after this election will be good regardless of who wins.