In Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Christians are called to be discerning, however, they are also called to ensure that they accurately recognize evil and good. In the middle of a hotly disputed election, many Americans have lost confidence in the morality of the other side of the aisle. This is exemplified by the fact that Republicans lost 43 points worth of confidence in the election process from October to November. [1]
One CNBC poll suggested that a staggering 97 percent of Trump voters do not believe the election results are legitimate. [2] This should not be surprising in light of the reaction to the 2016 election, which saw 66 percent of Democrats believing that President Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate. [3] This tells us what all of us already know intuitively: whether we accept the outcome of the election largely hinges on whether our candidate was the one who won.
One leftist pundit predicted before the election that President Donald Trump would try to “steal it” by challenging its results. [5] This individual assigns bad motives to the President’s attempts to sue for a review of the ballot-counting process, however, if President Trump is attempting to become an autocrat, he is terrible at it, given that he has already lost several public lawsuits.
In a time when people from both sides of the aisle are unwilling to give their opponents the benefit of the doubt, it is important to use the right terminology to characterize what is going on with the election.
None of us are in the position to judge the nuanced motivations behind any of our political heroes or villains. As it says in Luke 6:37 “If you do not judge other people, then you will not be judged. If you do not find others guilty, then you will not be found guilty. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
The United States is at a peak of political polarization that has been unseen in prior generations. A 2020 Gallup poll focusing on the partisan approval gap between Republicans and Democrats of President Trump’s performance found an 89-point difference between the two parties in their comparative views of the President. [4] Considering this wide disparity, court challenges of recent election results may help to ensure that the American people see the outcome as valid.
For the sake of our national survival, it is critical that, no matter what we do, we offer each other the benefit of the doubt. Whoever won the 2020 election, our country has a vested interest in making it clear once-and-for-all that the election process is trustworthy and the Presidency legitimate.
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[1] Nick Laughlin and Peyton Shelburne, “Election Trust Tracker: As States Certify Results, Most Republicans Continue to Doubt the Integrity of the Election,” Morning Consult (November 24, 2020), https://morningconsult.com/form/tracking-voter-trust-in-elections/
[2] Jacob Pramuk, “Almost no Trump voters consider Biden the legitimate 2020 election winner.” CNBC (November 23, 2020), https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/2020-election-results-almost-no-trump-voters-consider-biden-the-winner.html
[3] Kathy Frankovic, “Russia's impact on the election seen through partisan eyes,” YouGov (March 9, 2018), https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes
[4] Ed Kilgore, “Americans Reach Peak Partisan Polarization Under Trump,” The Intelligencer (July 6, 2020), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/americans-reach-peak-partisan-polarization-under-trump.html
[5] Nick Ottens, “How Trump Will Try to Steal the Election,” Atlantic Sentinel (September 25, 2020), https://atlanticsentinel.com/2020/09/how-trump-will-try-to-steal-the-election/
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