Democracy may be an increasingly rare creature in what is slowly becoming a worldwide jungle of authoritarian state rule. 

Nearly without exception, despotic rulers around the world are stubbornly reluctant to step away from power. For example, neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor Hungary’s Viktor Orbán would ever voluntarily step down for the greater good of their country. They essentially define themselves as one with the state, so there can be no stepping away. Theoretically, in a democracy, that is not the way things should work. 

Rather than on any individual leader, the mechanism of a peaceful transfer of power from the former to the newly elected leader is where democracy focuses its concern. The predictable stability that has always followed our democratic national elections avoids the civil unrest and violence that has plagued many changes of government around the world. Or, that stability has existed in the past, but perhaps not so clearly going forward.

In the election of 2022, all the hubbub about voting to save our democracy may have sounded a bit melodramatic, but it was based on the idea that in a democracy, it is possible to elect people to office whose actual goal is the end of the process of direct democratic rule. For example, if a governor or other official in charge of state elections could somehow declare the state’s popular election results null and void and subsequently empower that state’s partisan legislature to choose a winner, the popular vote count might easily be circumvented. Or, by whatever spurious logic, if similarly partisan officials could “legally” declare large swaths of opposition voters ineligible, the notion of a free and fair vote would be significantly undermined. 

Perhaps we need all candidates to unconditionally commit to honoring the outcome of our free and secure elections. Except in statutorily prescribed close elections, a losing candidate should not get a nothing-to-lose chance at willy-nilly challenging the will of the electorate. Uniformly baseless claims of election fraud and deception have come at a cost to the public and ultimately, the strength of our democracy. 

Perhaps the failure of such claims should result in legal penalties against what are sometimes wild-eyed conspiracy-mongering claimants. At the minimum, a stiff fine and/or misdemeanor charges might take some of the “wild” out of the “eyes” of a false “election fraud” claimant. A reaction not unlike the cautious restraint that follows from touching a hot stove.

John Pace lives in Honesdale, PA.