Our impending presidential election is raising a series of challenging questions. What should happen to those who ignore legitimate results or promise to do so? What steps should be taken to respond to efforts to undermine an election? Should you rely on the courts or undertake other forms of defiance? What are the costs of those activities? Those are all critically important issues. They are worth thinking through. Indeed, you could spend your whole life doing so. That’s what I am doing.
But answering each of those questions requires a clear understanding of a more basic matter: Why should we expect our politicians and our fellow citizens to endorse outcomes they disagree with? Why shouldn’t we go out of our way to find reasons to reject a result we find objectionable? It isn’t hard to do. No election in a country as large as our own, with as many ways of registering, with as many ways of voting, and as many ways of counting votes, will be without its complications.
Why is this a difficult question at all? Imagine that your preferred candidate loses on November 5. Will you change your mind about the candidates? Probably not. No one says: “Yesterday, I thought Candidate A would be a much better President. Now that she has lost by a few thousand votes, I think Candidate B will be the better President.”
This is an important fact about election outcomes. They don’t actually change our views about the candidates and about who would be a better president. It is very likely that you favor one candidate over the other. And you likely think that it would be really bad if their opponent wins. He or she will make decisions that are terrible for the country and the world. So why endorse the idea that the imagined winner should take office when you think they are awful and will make our lives a lot worse? Whatever the reasons, they should be very serious, and they should not depend on you changing your view of the candidates.
Here's one reason. Political scientists generally agree that democracy cannot persist if we reject election outcomes. And if we no longer rely on elections, changes in political power will generally occur under the shadow of violence. Unnecessary violence is not good (you didn’t need to read this column to know that … I hope). And avoiding needless violence seems like a serious consideration to bear in mind.
Here’s another important reason. Democratic elections, even ones with various flaws like our own, force the powerful to pay attention to the needs of citizens more reliably than alternatives. Fear of an election loss generates laws and policies that make more space for average citizens to lead valuable lives. We have good reasons to think this is generally true (even if in certain cases countries without real political oppositions successfully promote individual well-being).
These reasons are part of why we should accept election results. But they are not fully satisfying. If you are like me, you have the sense that there is something disrespectful about ignoring an electoral outcome. That disrespect isn’t captured by either of the two reasons mentioned above.
You might think that people who participate in politics have consented to the rules of the political system. And when they search for ways to overturn results, they are acting inconsistently. But consenting requires that you have the opportunity to choose. And almost no one is offered the choice about what kind of political system will govern their lives. Alternatively, you might think that this is an issue of fairness. But is our political system actually fair? It gives greater weight to the votes of people in Wyoming than California and allows the wealthy to exercise immense political influence. If our system is not fair, can fairness be a reason to accept an objectionable outcome?
Here’s a better reason. Disregarding the outcome of an election requires you to treat your fellow citizens as pawns rather than as political agents, as people whose actions should not count, as people whose actions can be used to advance your ends.
I am the parent of two children. I know when I want them to go to bed. Suppose I offer them a choice: my preferred time or another. If they choose my time, I won’t interfere. I will get what I want, and my kids will feel like people whose actions and judgments have shaped an outcome. They will feel like agents. If they choose another time, I will overturn the decision.
In a situation like this, I am not treating my children as people whose views should count. That’s clear in the case where I overturn their decision. But I have not treated them as agents even in the case where they chose “correctly” and I sat on my hands. Why not? Because I was only ever going to accept that one outcome. Their actions have not determined when they will be in bed. This is true even if they feel like they have contributed to the decision.
I hope you can see the force of this analogy. If we reject an electoral outcome after the election (or threaten to do so, while encouraging people to vote), we are getting our fellow citizens to act as agents, though we have no intention to respect their choices. This is true even if the electoral system is not perfect. When we do that, we are treating our fellow citizens as individuals whose judgments and actions should not determine the course of our country. We are getting them to act as individuals who can rule, even though we will not heed their actions. That might be ok when it comes to getting your children in bed. But it is disrespectful when we are talking about our fellow citizens.
My bed-time example is silly. But the real-world provides examples which are not. When the Venezuelan government disregarded the outcome of its recent election, it did not treat its citizens as rulers of their own country.
Why accept the outcome of an election? Why not look for excuses to overturn it? We have more than one good reason to do so. And I have not even mentioned them all. But among the most important is the need to treat our fellow citizens as potential authors of political life. When we reject, or threaten to reject, an election’s outcome, we treat each other like pawns. I think my fellow citizens are owed respect. Perhaps you do too. If so, then you know why you should accept electoral outcomes you passionately disagree with. That’s just what it means to live in a democracy.
Alexander Kirshner is an associate professor of political science. This piece is part of the "Virtues of Democracy" column, a series of op-eds by faculty and student contributors across Trinity College and the Sanford School of Public Policy. The column typically runs on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
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