One Small Voice: Shame on promoting voting distrust

by Lynn Mandaville

Though election day in the United States is still more than a week away, last week Friday was voting day for us in the Mandaville household.

Our ballots arrived in the mail more than a week ago, so we took the time afforded us by our early mail-in system to carefully review all the candidates, as well as the ten propositions we must vote on.

We have the usual slate of candidates: senator, representative, secretary of state, state officers, and a few judges.  But in AZ we also must decide on whether to retain 47 judges already seated in their particular jurisdictions.

It makes for a lengthy ballot.

It’s beneficial to have this extra time to ponder each vote before coloring in all the little circles and putting the ballot back in the mail in time to arrive before election day.  We can research each candidate, judge and proposal at our leisure

It’s also comforting to know we don’t have to stand in a long line waiting to cast our votes.

Unlike the last five years we have voted in Arizona, there was a disturbing difference this year.

After we had our ballots filled out and sealed, my husband asked me, “Are you sure you want me to mail these instead of taking them to the drop-off at City Hall?”

I was taken aback.

Why wouldn’t we put them in the mail?

“Well, you know,” my husband said.

I replied, “No, I don’t know.”

“So, you trust the mail?”

“We always trusted it before.  What’s different now?”

He paused in thought for only a second, then took the ballots out to the mailbox for the next day’s collection.

It’s off-putting to see what one man’s lie about the trustworthiness of our election system can do to a reasonable man’s thought processes.

One man, whose ego cannot fathom that he lost an election for president, has put doubt in the minds of almost half of the American electorate, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that  no fraud was found in the 2020 election.

(Okay, a few examples of illegal voting were identified.  But that number was determined to have been inconsequential to the outcome of the election.)

As a result, many states this year have ballot issues that propose making it more difficult to vote than before, despite systems as here in AZ being thorough in protecting against fraudulent activity.

AZ Governor Doug Ducey (R) defended this state’s process against the claims made by our former president that the election here was not just flawed, but corrupt.  Three recounts determined that the vote counts were accurate, without corruption.)

To be clear, I have no objection to making sure our elections are secure.

What I do object to is making voting so difficult as to dissuade people from using their constitutional right to participate in this all-too-important democratic practice.

Right now, in America, it seems apparent that Republicans believe that their candidates will not win election if voting is an easy proposition.

Studies have indicated that more Democrats than Republicans take advantage of early voting and mail-in voting.  That may be due, in part, because the former president told his supporters that the system is rigged, and that Republicans ought to go to the polls to vote instead of taking advantage of their states’ more convenient methods of voting.

The fact remains, however, that early voting and mail-in voting are not nefarious means of rigging elections. Multiple and needlessly expensive recounts have confirmed the reliability of these methods.

It is most unfortunate that Republican fearmongering has served to create an atmosphere of mistrust in what has been fair and reliable voting, whether in person at the polls or from the comfort of our own living rooms.

As in all elections past, my family and I trust these tried-and-true methods of casting our precious votes.

It will be only sore losers who resort to the tactics of the last president of the United States, be they Republicans or Democrats, who cry foul in defeat instead of conceding graciously.

To everyone out there, regardless of your party affiliation, don’t forget to vote!

It is this precious franchise that sets us apart from the rest of the non-democratic nations of the world, and we must not squander it.