Respect the Vote, Respect the Voters

by

Nov. 10, 2020

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  (Paul, Ephesians 6:12)

Since Nov. 3, I’ve been hiking daily in the mountains that surround us here in Ojai.  The strata on the faces of the cliffs are testaments to geological time that puts the present moment into much-needed perspective.  Gazing at those heights takes my election-induced breathlessness away. 

For all the exhaling in relief, we’re still facing a very serious threat.  The Republican Party has become an immediate danger to the survival of democracy.  It is pandering dangerously to Trump’s baseless claim that voting fraud is stealing the election from him.  The Republican governor of Florida is urging swing states to violate the will of the people and appoint electors that will vote for Trump.  The Republican candidates for Senate in Georgia are demanding that the election officials in that state should resign due to failure to correct nonexistent election irregularities.  The Republican Party has convinced a majority of its voters that outlandish vote-rigging conspiracy theories are true.

I am still hopeful that when push comes to shove, cooler heads among the Republicans will stop the current drift toward a constitutional crisis.  I sense that enough of them are weary of Trump’s antics to put on the brakes and demand that the will of the people prevails.  But while the majority of Americans are celebrating Biden’s clear victory, our democracy is in acute peril.  We must prepare to act, if and when the Trumpers try to subvert the vote.  (Join your local Indivisible chapter to be ready to be mobilized.) 

A peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden will not eliminate the threat of Trumpism once and for all.  A current Atlantic Monthly article outlines the long-term danger that we face.  The next would-be autocrat won’t be as incompetent as Donald Trump.  He or she will learn from Trump’s spectacular mistakes, and can take full advantage of the loopholes in the Constitution to sabotage the will of the people.

There will be much to ponder after the final result is clear. There is understandable despair that while the popular vote was decisive, there was no landslide. Despair that so many Americans voted for such a bad person and for so many of his enablers.  Despair that cows in sparsely-populated “red states” have more representation in the Senate than humans do.  Despair that gerrymandering by Republicans will ensure minority rule in statehouses and give them outsized power in Congress. 

But despair isn’t a sustainable option.  We must with vigor carry on our march for progress on all fronts: reversing climate change, getting health care for all, humanizing our immigration policies, ending racism.  And most importantly, we must march on for protecting democracy itself.

And we must do so with respect for the people who didn't vote the way we wished.  Real respect.  And this respect is at the heart of voting itself.  Our democracy is meant to renew the institutions of government as the hearts and minds of citizens are renewed.  The will of the majority changes.  We must respect that will, or we’ll be ruled by tyrants who lock our government into agendas that we can’t change.

Good people vote for bad people for all sorts of understandable or not-so-good reasons. Donald Trump should be impeached again for calling himself the victor and lying that there was widespread voting fraud - an outrageous attack on the very foundation of our democracy.  We should condemn the political party that he has so deeply debased.  But we should not impeach the people who voted for him. They deserve our loving attention.

They’ve become entangled in what St. Paul called a “spiritual force of evil”.  Or in the words of the King James Version, a “power and principality”: an organization so corrupted that it must be eliminated or completely reformed.  But we must be very clear that an organization or institution cannot be equated with the people who lead or support it.  “Powers and principalities” have lives of their own, distinct from the people associated with them.  They are systemic.  Racism is bigger than any individual with racist ideas or actions.  Same with sexism and homophobia and religious intolerance.  We should condemn racism but be gentle with the individuals who are infected with it.

We can attack nefarious organizations and “isms” without attacking the people who, for all sorts of reasons, are caught up in them.  In our words and actions, we must model the kind of country we want America to be. Only by doing so can we begin to change hearts and minds, and get where we need to go as a nation.

The Rev. Jim Burklo serves as Senior Associate Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life, University of Southern California. This post is republished with permission from his blog, Musings, on the Progressive Christianity website.