One of many ways this country has managed more than two centuries of democratic elections and transitions is through transparency, with poll workers and watchers from the political parties participating in and observing the inner gears of vote-gathering and vote-counting.
In many cases, these people may have strong personal political leanings, but they’ve set them aside with the understanding that their role is to be overseers of a free and fair electoral process that, while imperfect and often evolving, has served as a global example of how to register the people’s will. That’s why it was a former American president, Jimmy Carter, who had the credibility to send observers to monitor elections around the world.
There’s good reason to fear that the long run of American electoral integrity is at risk in 2022, as waves of poll workers leave their posts in the midst of sustained public harassment, intimidation and even death threats, and are sometimes replaced by hard-right election deniers who see their role less as protecting polling places and more as ensuring that their candidate wins.
Outside the formal workings of the election process, more conspiracy-minded election deniers have appointed themselves guardians of the franchise, intimidating voters who drop off early ballots on the pretense that they’re just watching for fraud. The situation has gotten serious enough that a Trump-appointed federal judge stepped in to block some of an Arizona group’s most egregious practices, including standing near ballot drop-off boxes with firearms or filming voters as they dropped off votes.
There is a long and healthy tradition of credible, trained observers from across the political spectrum working to ensure that there is free and fair access to the polls, no electioneering at polling places and no shenanigans when the votes are cast and tallied. Vigilantes are not needed or wanted and must be answered with aggressive enforcement that makes clear that political interference in the elections process — true, provable, intentional interference — is intolerable and a crime not just against one person or candidate, but against our political system as a whole.
