“The vote is precious. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society, and we must use it.” - John Lewis, late civil rights activist and member of the US House of Representatives for Georgia

By Shelley Bradford Bell, Chair
Democrats Abroad France – Paris

It is not necessary to rehash all the negative things that have happened in America since the coming of MAGA and Trump. We have all seen in real time the elimination of civil rights, entrance into unsanctioned wars, rise in prices for food, gas and utilities, and loss of jobs for mostly communities of color and women.

We have watched in horrific disbelief the oppression of voters’ rights: manipulation of district lines, strategies to dismantle and degrade absentee voting and mail-in ballots, reduction in polling places, threats to have ICE agents present on Election Day, outlandish rules about drinking water while standing in line to vote, and the outright refusal of election representatives to certify an election when the outcome is not what they want.

While some legal challenges have been successful, we have also experienced firsthand the Supreme Court’s role in the destruction of our democracy, so we cannot assume that future challenges will favor voters. The judicial system has been an active player in this dismantling of democracy.

With Trump’s attempted use of executive action to impose an Election Day receipt deadline on mail ballots, including ballots legally cast by Election Day under state laws that permit those ballots to arrive and be counted afterward, we can expect him to fight every ballot cast.

The distinction is critical: a ballot arriving after Election Day is not necessarily a ballot cast after Election Day. A voter may have completed and mailed a ballot legally and on time, yet postal delivery may bring it to election officials days later. Where state law provides for that ballot to be counted, its later arrival does not, by itself, make the vote late or illegal. Efforts to treat the date a ballot arrives as though it were necessarily the date a citizen voted risk excluding ballots that voters cast in accordance with the law.

After November 3, Trump or anyone could go to court and claim that certain late-arriving ballots should not have been counted. That could generate litigation and potentially delay the final results in a close race. Potentially, certification could be delayed—but filing a lawsuit does not automatically delay it. Someone could file a post-election lawsuit challenging ballots and ask a court for an order affecting the count or certification. The court would then decide whether there is sufficient legal and factual basis to grant that relief. In recent elections, certification disputes have sometimes produced temporary delays. We can count on Trump and MAGA to use these delaying tactics in the States they lose.

For example, consider Georgia. The latest polling has Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms at 45% and Republican Rick Jackson at 48%, with 7% undecided— with a +/- 3% margin of error, Bottoms has a chance to win. Should she win, we can expect a firestorm of protest, accusations and litigation by Trump.  Georgia law allows election results to be challenged in court, and we can expect that a Bottoms win will result in post-election litigation. We already know how long an election a dispute can live as Donald Trump continues to dispute Georgia's 2020 presidential result, although that election was counted three times—including a statewide hand audit—and certified for Joe Biden. Should Bottoms win, we can expect a challenge.

The larger the voter turnout and the clearer the evidence of lawful voting, the more likely we are to prevail—not only by winning an election, but by making it unmistakably clear through our vote that

“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” George Jean Nathan