With democracy on the line, voters must reject the threat posed by election deniers on the ballot | Editorial

The future of democracy in America is riding on this Election Day. What happens on Nov. 8 will impact the presidential election in 2024 and beyond. Sadly, voters know that democracy is on the line, but many seem more focused on gas prices.

Voters need to understand free and fair elections are the foundation of American democracy and not something to be taken for granted. Too many brave men and women have fought and died to protect the right to vote to just cede control to conspiracy-driven autocrats masquerading as public servants.

Four years of Donald Trump’s corruption, lies, incompetence, hate, cruelty, racism, and cozying up to dictators should have shaken every patriotic American to their core. But instead, voters appear on the verge of electing scores of Trump acolytes who are poised to eat away at our state and federal institutions.

Nearly 300 Republicans running for office across the country have denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Election deniers are on the ballot in 48 of the 50 states, including 10 Republicans running for office in Pennsylvania.

Leading the bogus, election-denying charge in Pennsylvania is Doug Mastriano, the unfit Republican gubernatorial candidate who marched with insurrectionists that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. If elected, Mastriano plans to install a secretary of state who could decertify elections if he doesn’t like the outcome — undermining the will of voters.

» READ MORE: In Mastriano’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a chilling template for future races | Editorial

Also on the ballot in Pennsylvania is Mehmet Oz, the TV doctor from New Jersey who touted the questionable benefits of a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a treatment for COVID-19. During the primary, Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, sided with Trump’s 2020 election fraud, saying, “We cannot move on.” Oz has since tried to massage his stance, though his campaign is staffed with election deniers. It is clear that his interests lie more in obtaining power on the national stage than in serving the state of Pennsylvania.

Seven other election-denying Republicans running for Congress in Pennsylvania appear poised to win reelection. They include: U.S. Reps. Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Lloyd Smucker, John Joyce, Guy Reschenthaler, Glenn Thompson, and Mike Kelly.

Even after the deadly insurrection, they all voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on zero evidence of fraud. Members of Congress who fail to uphold their sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, are not fit for office.

Democracies don’t always end with a military coup. They can erode slowly from within, as Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt detailed in their book, How Democracies Die. Levitsky and Ziblatt laid out a four-part test to identify authoritarians: they spurn democratic institutions, dismiss the legitimacy of political opponents, tolerate or stoke violence, and diminish civil liberties.

Trump checked all four of those boxes during his one term. Rather than repudiate the twice-impeached former reality TV show host after he incited the insurrection, the bulk of the Republican Party has embraced Trump’s election fraud playbook — perhaps because it works.

» READ MORE: Scott Perry, Jeffrey Clark, and the lingering threat of Jan. 6 enablers | Editorial

Election deniers running for secretary of state in Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada could, if they win next week, sway the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in those swing states.

Mark Finchem, the Republican running for secretary of state in Arizona, is a member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers and has pushed bizarre QAnon conspiracies, including that Democratic politicians are part of a pedophile ring.

Finchem has already said he will not concede if he loses. But if he wins, then the election was valid. You can’t run a democracy using the proverbial coin toss trick of “heads, I win; tails, you lose.”

Yet, Finchem and 11 other election deniers running for secretary of state positions across the country have received millions of dollars in campaign donations from corporate leaders. If elected, the secretaries of state could make it harder to vote, refuse to certify elections, force endless audits, and sow further doubt in elections.

State legislatures are already working to curtail voting rights and passing scores of bills designed to make it harder to vote. Meanwhile, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court continues to chip away at voting rights. At the same time, poll workers and civic-minded election officials face death threats and other forms of violence.

Voters need to be informed, engaged, and enraged about the stakes. When Benjamin Franklin was famously asked during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 whether America was a monarchy or a republic, he is said to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The quote may be apocryphal, but the message behind it is vital. Tuesday will give voters another opportunity to demonstrate that they can, indeed, keep democracy intact.