A sketch on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” many years ago was about a block of flats (Brit for “apartment building”) that was held up by hypnosis. Its residents had to believe in it, or it would fall down.
One day they didn’t, and it did.
Democracy is like that. If people stop believing in it, it will collapse.
America and Utah are far too tolerant of the growing number of politicians whose failure to win elections doesn’t lead to gracious concession speeches and calls to respect the voice of the people.
Instead, we see far too many sore losers crying foul, claiming fraud and making up reasons why the election didn’t really turn out the way it did.
If those protests ever turned up a microgram of evidence that our elections were rigged, or even merely flawed, then attention must be paid. But they don’t, so our democracy is weakened and our collective power to select our government is undermined.
Which is the goal of all this caterwauling.
Utah state Rep. Phil Lyman is among the more visible, and tiresome, crusaders against Utah’s election system. Despite having lost to incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox in the Republican primary by more than 38,000 votes, Lyman and others are peppering state and local election offices with open records requests seeking copies of petitions and other election records, a huge snipe hunt for invalid signatures or suspicious ballot counts.
Many such documents are specifically exempt from Utah public disclosure requirements, for fear that releasing them would endanger individual voters’ privacy.
What’s horrible is that, in properly denying these absurd fishing expeditions, our election officials hand the conspiracy theorists another rhetorical club.
If there’s nothing to hide, why keep the records secret?
If we really care about our democracy, government should do even more to inspire confidence in our elections. Even without any evidence of fraud, it will never be enough to just say, “Trust us.”
Utah lawmakers should be receptive, not to wild conspiracy claims, but to ideas to strengthen our system with some truly independent election overseers — technical experts who have never run for office — so that our faith in our elections will not just survive, but be earned.
