Don’t Panic Reading ‘Electoral Process Porn’: There Are Plenty of Safeguards to Make Sure Voters’ Wishes Are Respected

Another example is the armchair detective mystery, with the promise that if you squint just right, you can find the clues that finally solve the big crime. This type of piece often centers on alleged voter fraud, making a legitimate loss feel more palatable by suggesting it’s theft instead. The thing is, these are usually murder mysteries with no dead bodies. People motivated to play detective will often find suspicious patterns in conduct that’s entirely lawful.

A third version is a horror story, with jump scares at scale: tales of voter suppression predicting that evildoers will steal the election by preventing millions of legitimate voters from casting ballots that count.

But there are practices and rules that can be obstacles to voting.
There sure are. I’m a civil rights lawyer, so it’s worth noting that some election rules do make the process harder than it needs to be. Sometimes intentionally. Rules disenfranchising people with convictions offer a particularly stark version of that very real problem. We’ve got an obligation to keep making the election process better.

But these electoral process porn articles often portray the system as an endless nightmare of procedural hurdles. That’s not reality for most of the electorate.

Democrats and others have criticized Trump and his followers in the GOP for destroying confidence in our elections. Yet much of this kind of what you label “porn” comes from Democrats and progressives. Doesn’t this also diminish people’s confidence in the election’s integrity?
Yes. And it diminishes people’s confidence in the power of their vote. I think it would be somewhat less harmful if it were paired with a message of empowerment, like, “Here is what people are trying to do to take power. But it’s not going to work. And you can ensure your voice counts by registering and casting your ballot.”

I don’t mean to shake my finger at writers who are trying to present information in a way that draws readers in. But the tone of these columns, and the degree to which they empower or discourage, matters. These process-porn pieces are at their worst when the voters are peripheral, when the articles say, “This is being done to you, and there’s really nothing you can do about it other than get angry and give us money.”

We’re getting pretty close to Election Day, which is the culmination of the vote. Are there legitimate problems that voters should be aware of?
There will be some bumps, sure. Until humans figure out how not to make mistakes, there will be issues that crop up. It’s a good thing that for most Americans, voting is a period of time, rather than a single day. That gives opportunities to catch and address the problems.

The U.S. election process is remarkably robust. Everyone saw that in 2020, the most scrutinized election in the nation’s history, during the middle of a pandemic. The system was stress-tested in ways beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, and it responded remarkably well.

There’s always work to improve the voting system – the Constitution reminds Americans to work toward a “more perfect union.” But the fact that we can and should do better should not shake people’s confidence in the integrity of the election results overall.

The Electoral College means that a few thousand voters in a few swing states are going to decide the winner. It’s going to be up to those voters, flat out – who decides to cast a ballot and who they decide to vote for – not a deus ex machina. The election process is designed to tell us who we chose, not to determine the answer without us.

Of course, it has happened that a presidential election came down to 537 votes in a single state – remember Florida in 2000. When it’s that close, everything matters. A butterfly ballot flaps its wings in one part of the country and the answer changes nationwide.

But 537 votes is an anomaly. The elections of 2016 and 2020 were very close in the states that determined the Electoral College results – but still nowhere near Florida-in-2000 close.

And because of all the fail-safes built into the system, even very close is something the election process can handle. I’m very confident that the voters are going to decide this election, not the lawyers or the courts.

Electoral process porn is adult fiction. In the real world, it turns out “The Key To The Whole Thing This Time” isn’t a process quirk. It’s us.

Justin Levitt is Professor of Law, Loyola Law School Los Angeles. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.