The 2022 midterms viewed through a survival-of-democracy lens

A Destabilized alternative election guide

By signaling to our subconscious that things are normal and therefore fine, the comfortable familiarity of election coverage can have an almost palliative effect. This is especially so if you watch cable news or follow along through a mainstream outlet like the New York Times or 538, which employ the much-maligned-but-still-predominant “bothsides” style of political coverage that implies the two parties are mirror images of one another.¹ This palliative effect is amplified by our desire for things to in fact be normal, our desire to live in a stable society not threatened by rising fascism and socio-political crisis.

The majority of election coverage will focus on traditional political concerns like results in key statewide races and bellwether districts, implications for the 2024 presidential contest, and which party will control the US House and Senate. These things all matter but when you view an election through a survival-of-democracy and stability-of-society lens, other outcomes look even more important. Below are the key things I’ll be watching for tonight and in the days and weeks to come.

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#1: Election system resilience

Republicans have been engaged in a sustained assault on democracy since at least 2020, if not 2016. They and their allies have:

• Mounted a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the 2020 election certification process, leading to the deaths of five Capitol Police officers and seriously injuring more than 100 others.

• Passed a raft of voter suppression laws in dozens of states in 2021-22:

  G. Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris

  #NEW As of February 19th, Republican lawmakers from 45 different states have introduced over 250 new bills to restrict access to voting, a roughly 7x increase over proposals at this time last year. New restrictions are concentrated in the swing states.

  

  economist.comRepublicans introduce a torrent of new laws to restrict votingThere are nearly seven times as many such proposals in state legislatures as there were a year ago

• Created special election police forces and engaged in theatrical arrests of people who voted despite supposedly being ineligible:

  The Marshall Project @MarshallProj

  Florida’s Voter Fraud Arrests Are Scaring Away Formerly Incarcerated Voters

  

  trib.alFlorida’s Voter Fraud Arrests Are Scaring Away Formerly Incarcerated VotersDeSantis made a spectacle of arresting voters with felony convictions. Now, some eligible voters are opting out of midterms even beyond Florida.

• Harassed and menaced election officials, causing many to fear for their physical safety and ultimately resign:

Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait

I'm trying to avoid alarmism, but the elements here -- competent officials fleeing, insurgents moving in -- looks like a system in an advanced level of disintegration.

Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait

This @Milbank report from Nevada is one of the most horrifying things I have ever read https://t.co/3UvsNwQAeZ https://t.co/gPMgu4dGvv

• Intimidated voters in the act of casting their ballots:

  Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew

  Armed individuals dressed in tactical gear are surveilling ballot drop boxes in Arizona, raising concerns about intimidation during early voting in the midterm elections.

  

  huffpost.comArmed Individuals In Tactical Gear Are Showing Up At Ballot Boxes In ArizonaAt least three run-ins have been documented at a Maricopa County drop box during early voting.

• Refused to say they’ll accept the results of the election and telegraphed their plans to allege fraud where there is none (specifically in Pennsylvania):

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

Trump lawyer Christina Bobb previews that MAGAs will try to declare victory as votes are being counted: "There should absolutely be a result no later than the middle of the night, early Wed. morning. I think those areas that don't have a result, it's gonna look very suspicious"

• And, most importantly of all, convinced a supermajority of Republicans that the 2020 election was marred by widespread vote fraud (it wasn’t) and, by extension, that election results generally can’t be trusted.

We have held exactly zero national elections since most of these these things happened. We don’t know how our election system will perform under this level of strain, which is unprecedented in modern American history. The system working includes requesting and receiving absentee ballots, finding precincts, casting ballots, deterring and punishing voter intimidation, counting votes, recording vote counts, certifying vote tallies, formalizing results, announcing winners, conceding losses, and handling Election Day and post-election lawsuits in accordance with the rule of law.

The biggest question in the 2022 midterms is how effectively the U.S. elections system will function.²

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#2: 2024 cornerstones

Another important outcome I’ll be watching tomorrow³ is who wins the elections for offices that would give Republican election deniers the straightest path to stealing the 2024 presidential election. These include the races for governor in the key swing states, and the races for secretary of state in the subset of those states where the SoS is chief elections officer:

• Michigan governor & secretary of state

• Pennsylvania governor (secretary of state is appointed by the governor)

• Wisconsin governor (secretary of state is not chief elections officer)

• Arizona governor & secretary of state

• Georgia governor & secretary of state⁴

• Nevada governor & secretary of state

(This list would include North Carolina but state elections there happen in presidential years. In 2020, the state reelected its current Democratic governor and secretary of state.)

These races matters for the obvious reason: the 2024 presidential election could be decided by any one of these states (or a combination of them), and a governor or secretary of state who wanted to reject or change the results would have a number of levers with which to do it. Each state makes its own rules but, from the AP, here’s how it generally works:

After an election, local officials count ballots, review the tallies to make sure they match the votes cast, and check that people who cast provisional ballots because of some problem at the polls did so legally.

The local elections office then sends the final results to a board for certification. Such boards are typically bipartisan, their members either elected or appointed by county leaders. Barring an obvious problem with the count that could change the result of the election, the board then approves the vote tallies before sending them to the state for final certification. That’s usually done by a state canvassing board, the secretary of state or a small group that might include the governor and other state officials.

From there, federal law requires governors to prepare official certificates to report the popular vote in their states. These documents are often signed by the governors…

Local officials counting the votes, county boards approving the tally, secretaries of state or others certifying the results, and governors making it official and transmitting the results to Congress all have to execute their duties with integrity for the system to function as designed. An election denier serving as governor or secretary of state in any of these states could not just disrupt the 2024 vote count, but plausibly turn the loser of a presidential election into the next president.⁵

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#3: Division vs. unity

Finally, I’ll be looking closely at results related to American unity. Specifically, I’ll look at gaps in voting between groups representing the key divides in American society. I’ll be looking at how these gaps have changed since 2020, as well as their absolute size. The question I’ll be asking is: “Do the election results suggest American society is growing even more divided, or do we see movement, however tentative, in the direction of greater unity?”

I’ll be looking in particular at the following:

• Urban-rural gap

• Traditional gender gap

• Generational gap (young voters compared to older voters)

• Gender-generational gap (young women compared to older men)

• Religion gap

All else equal, I will consider it a good sign if these groups vote in ways that are more similar to one another than they were in 2020. I suspect and fear we’ll find these gaps have widened since 2020, but I’m holding out hope that I’m wrong.

A big caveat here is the only information along these lines tonight will come from exit polls, and doing political analysis based on raw exit polls is like making life decisions using a Ouija board. (Among the only certainties on Election Night are 1) pundits and political analysts will cite exit polls as if the data is meaningful, and 2) exit poll data will not be meaningful.)

We’ll have to wait until early 2023, when exit poll data is weighted by actual turnout, to have an accurate and textured understanding of what happened.

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There are thousands of other important elections happening tomorrow that will influence in various ways the future course of American democracy, including state supreme court, state attorneys general, and key sheriffs and DA races. Bolts has the most comprehensive elections cheat sheet around.

It also matters a lot whether the Democrats or Republicans control Congress, or if it’s split control, and I’ll be watching that, as well. The Senate matters most because it confirms judges, and the integrity of the judiciary matters in the fight for democracy. Plus, if there were a vacancy on the Supreme Court in the next two years, a Republican Senate wouldn’t let President Biden fill it, while a Democratic Senate obviously would. The Democrats could accomplish a lot in the next two years if they somehow hold the House and pick up a couple Senate seats. That outcome looks unlikely, but it would be huge if it happened.

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Again, we won’t actually know most of these outcomes on Election Night. The important races will likely be too close to call, and in such a big country even getting a clear and comprehensive understanding of how our elections system performed will take time.

Here’s hoping and praying for the best.

God bless America.

1. This style is as much business model as obsolete journalistic convention, so it’s not going away anytime soon.

2. I’ll be sending strength and gratitude to poll workers, elections officials, law enforcement, and especially voters.

3. And almost certainly for several days as counting of postmarked but late-arriving absentee ballots trickle in, voter challenges are processed, and recounts take place in close races.

4. The Republican candidates for all of these offices are election deniers except for Georgia. Things in Georgia therefore could be worse, but Trump-era experience warns us not to assume Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger would necessarily conduct themselves with integrity again in 2024 knowing the heightened personal risks and political costs they would bear.

5. You can read more on this here.