Trending
While several political science professors insist that President Donald Trump's refusal to accept widely reported election results is hurting the country, one says it would be best to let the questioning play out.
Mail-in voting is clearly more complicated than in-person voting and therefore created at least the potential for more wrongdoing. It makes sense to allow the examination to proceed, said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.
Nevertheless, it would be "hard to believe" that Republican efforts would reverse the outcome in the presidential race, he said.
Trump's challenge to that outcome, despite a run of court defeats, along with the reluctance of many Republicans to acknowledge Joe Biden as president-elect, highlight dangerous divisions, other professors said.
"If you undermine the idea of electoral integrity and legitimate succession and do it without any evidence, you are undermining democracy," said Christopher Beem, assistant research professor and managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University Park.
The claims that Trump is making that widespread fraud cost him the election, given the lack of significant specifics that his lawyers have brought to courts on his behalf, "strain credulity," said Joseph Melusky, professor of political science at Saint Francis University and director of its Center for the Study of Government and Law. "It's highly unlikely that the extent of fraudulent voting he's talking about exists," Melusky said.
Still, it shouldn't be a partisan issue to ensure that elections are conducted openly and fairly, Melusky said.
With more than 70 million people voting by mail or other nontraditional means, many for the first time, it was clear that things weren't going to go "flawlessly," Beem said.
The real question, though, is whether the flaws were deliberate and whether they sufficed to "undermine the will of the people," Beem said.
There's no evidence of either, he said.
Eventually, the idea that the election was stolen will "go away," based on state certifications of the vote and the Electoral College decision Monday, Beem said.
Some Republican politicians, though, probably will never let go of the idea of the stolen election, based on political calculations, Beem said.
Republicans in the General Assembly are justified in calling for an examination of how mail-in voting worked, Madonna said.
They and the Democratic administration should "look at exactly what transpired and why," Madonna said.
There were differences in the way things were handled in the 67 counties. The voting process needs to be more consistent and uniform.
There may need to be additional safeguards, he said.
It would help to allow early pre-canvassing of mail-in ballots, so they can be counted more easily on Election Day, as in Florida, Madonna said. It might also help to ensure that observers from both political parties and candidates can more easily witness pre-canvassing and canvassing, he said.
"This is a learning experience for us," Madonna said.
Michael Coulter, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Grove City College, rated by niche.com as the most conservative college in Pennsylvania, said "The manner in which (Trump) is not accepting results is unprecedented in modern American history."
"There's no way I can say with 100 percent certainty that there was not fraud," Coulter said. "But for it to have occurred in multiple states and in enough of a number that ... to me there's no chance."
One indication that fraud wasn't a factor were the non-presidential races, according to Coulter.
If there was a massive illegal effort to elect Biden, why would the perpetrators have refrained from providing a bump for Democrats down-ballot? he asked rhetorically.
Down-ballot Democrats actually did worse than expected.
The insistence of the Trump campaign and Republican allies that the election results are bogus runs counter to a respect for the rule of law and an acceptance of norms that hold society together, according to Daniel DiLeo, associate professor of political science at Penn State Altoona.
Democrats are not immune to disrespecting norms, either -- as shown by the urging of some that Biden "pack" the Supreme Court to offset Trump appointees whose place on the court they consider to be illegitimate, DiLeo said.
The current divide between urban, mostly Democratic, areas of Pennsylvania and rural, mostly Republican areas, is a con
tinuation of a "very stubborn and profound" difference in outlook that has been present throughout U.S. history, DiLeo said.
The division is both geographical and cultural, and on the rural side, it's characterized by resentment and the feeling that elites hold them in contempt.
"Nobody likes being talked down to," DiLeo said.
A component of that resentment is "status anxiety," based on how people feel they're situated in the social pecking order, DiLeo said.
Despite what some observers think, it's not all about economics, he said.
There were plenty of Trump signs recently on properties with two-car garages, he said.
Actions of the U.S. Supreme Court many decades ago helped initiate some of that resentment among conservatives, especially in rural areas, he said. Starting in the 1960s, the court "got out in front," becoming a "policy-making body," he said.
Problematic decisions included the "totally undemocratic" Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, DiLeo said. Another was the decision that prohibited prayer in public schools.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 8-14-949-7038.