To paraphrase the 1960s saying, “suppose they gave a war and nobody came” — suppose we had a November 2024 election and many Nevadans didn’t bother to vote? Or even worse, what if many of those who did don’t accept the results?

Free and fair elections have been the cornerstone of America’s republic. As the saying goes, “We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” It’s also been suggested that it’s not the voting that’s democracy — it’s the counting that is.

Questioning election legitimacy for a quarter-century

For most of the U.S.’s 236-year history of presidential elections, the results have been uncontested and the transition of power from one individual or political party to another has been relatively smooth. Lately, not so much.

Concern about the integrity of American elections didn’t just start with Donald Trump’s election in 2016, which opponent Hillary Clinton called “illegitimate,” or the most recent presidential contest in 2020, where President Trump has refused to accept an election defeat. The contemporary tipping point that challenged voting integrity was the 2000 Bush v. Gore Florida vote count. This contested election deepened party polarization over the rules of the game and began the current erosion of trust in the American electoral process.

Growing concerns about the security and inclusiveness of the voting process is deeply dividing Americans. Both major political parties share the blame for this. Politicians representing the two major parties have managed to make matters worse.

Anyone who’s been reading “Memo from the Middle” for the past three years knows I’m not quick to judge one side over the other on most issues. But in the case of the situation surrounding America’s election integrity, I think both political parties are guilty of eroding the public’s trust. It’s a serious matter for the survival of freedom. As Founding Father and second president of the U.S. John Adams warned, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Consequences of a principled stand

If it’s true that America is on the verge of the self-inflicted demise of democracy — then I’d say an “intervention” is needed, and it’s needed now.

Let’s start with the Republicans, my previous party. Their all-but-certain presidential candidate, Donald Trump, has a history of denying the outcome of elections he’s previously lost. Before becoming the GOP nominee in 2016, Trump accused fellow Republican Ted Cruz of stealing the Iowa caucus race he entered, tweeting at the time, “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” and later, “Based on the fraud committed by Sen. Cruz, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.”

The former president went on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency in 2016, losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but winning the Electoral College. After his election, he began making claims of fraud more regularly.

“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he claimed.

Trump then went on to announce to his supporters months before his campaign against Joe Biden, including at Nevada rallies, that “the only way we’re going to lose this election (in 2020) is if the election is rigged.” It’s a belief Trump and his party faithful have maintained to this day, and which prompted the large Capitol Hill protest that got out of hand on Nov. 6, 2020.

No court in the U.S. has substantiated the former president’s allegations of significant voter fraud in 2020, and Nevada’s Secretary of State at the time, Barbara Cegavske — herself a conservative Republican — said after investigating Trump’s charges her office found no evidentiary support for his allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Cegavske was subsequently shown the door by the Nevada GOP for the principled stand she took.

What can we agree on?

Presidential candidates of both parties have historically been gracious in accepting electoral defeat. One of the hallmarks of America’s representative democracy has been the smooth transition of power by the two major parties. Today’s polarizing populism, embodied by former President Trump, makes that proposition seem less likely. As author Steven Levitsky has written in “How Democracies Die,” “Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders — presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power … More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.”

A number of those steps have also been taken by the other political party, the Democrats. With the benefit of one-party control of Carson City in 2021, Democrats pushed through election “reforms” that Capitol political observers knew to favor Democrats’ partisan agenda. Cegavske wasn’t consulted, nor was she invited to the table to testify in any meetings. Slam-dunk partisan politics were on full display when Democrats powered through legislation that enshrined mail-in ballots and “ballot harvesting” into law during a special session of the Legislature. Provisions by Cegavske to further regulate voting security were rebuffed in a “legal” or “rigged” manner, depending on your perspective. The nonpartisan magazine Governing reported that the mail-in voting method “tends to favor Democratic candidates.”

Despite the convenience of mail-in ballots, problems are surfacing, as voiced recently by interim Washoe County election chief Cari-Ann Burgess, who told the RGJ, “It’s going to be terrible on our elections,” referring to the U.S. Postal Service’s plans to move mail-sorting operations to Sacramento before ballots are returned to Reno for official counting. Imagine the stink conspiracy-minded individuals are going to make over this not-so-brilliant move.

The one issue insuring voting integrity that you would think most Nevadans would agree on would be voter I.D. And in fact, they do. A poll commissioned by the Nevada Independent in 2023 found that “74% of Nevadans (including 62% of Democrats) supported requiring voters to show identification when they cast their ballot.”

Even so, Democratic leadership in Nevada has vehemently opposed any voter I.D. measures, with Attorney General Aaron Ford saying, “I can tell you this, that this attorney general will not abide by an unconstitutional act like voter ID here in this state.” More than 30 other states have photo ID requirements in their laws, and even former Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s Center has said “requiring a photo ID either for in-person or absentee balloting can be an important safeguard for election integrity, and the Supreme Court has ruled that such a requirement is not unconstitutional.”

Democrats in Nevada have rejected serious debate on the matter. Like Donald Trump, who refuses to accept any electoral outcome other than his “winning big” as a possibility, Democrats appear to want to preserve any political advantage they have — when given the power to do so.

Turn the tide

No constitutional office in Nevada is more important to the nonpartisan integrity of the election process than the Secretary of State. Current Democrat officeholder Cisco Aguilar received the support of many Republicans, and former ones like myself, who endorsed him in the hopes he would act in a nonpartisan way when it came to election integrity in Nevada.

Aguilar and others, both Democrat and Republican, have the chance to demonstrate they can become statesmen, and not mere partisans. Between now and the November election, and especially during the next legislative session, Aguilar in particular has the chance to turn the tide of divisiveness.

Voting should be easy. Cheating should be hard. Nevada can do better. Please send me your thoughts at tahoeboy68@gmail.com.

“Memo from the Middle” is an opinion column written by RGJ columnist Pat Hickey, a member of the Nevada Legislature from 1996 to 2016.

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