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Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses? Trump himself has a big personal incentive to say the election is "rigged" if he loses no matter what. It redirects the conversation from analyzing the defeat ("how could we do better"), which will inevitably shine a light on Trump's shortfalls, to one where the basic facts of reality are debated instead. The obvious example is the 2020 election. Lesser known was that Trump did the same thing in 2016 when he lost the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz. Now it seems he's preparing to do the same in 2024.
Many Republicans are more than willing to go along with this, mostly due to either negative partisanship or living in a bubble ("everyone I knew was voting for Trump, then the other guy won? Something doesn't smell right!"). If the pain of defeat stings, why not just be a sore loser instead? I've debated many people who thought the 2020 election was rigged, and inevitably it goes down one of three rabbitholes:
Vibes-based arguments that are short on substance, but long on vague nihilism that "something was off". Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen in some way, yet most are normies who don't spend a lot of time trying to form a set of coherent opinions, so the fallback of "something was off" serves as a way to affirm their tribal loyalty without expending much effort.
Motte-and-bailey to Trump's claims by ignoring everything Trump himself says, and instead going after some vague institutional flaw without providing any evidence to how it actually impacted 2020. For instance, while mail-in ballots are a nice convenience for many, there are valid concerns to a lack of oversight in how people fill out their ballots. People can be subjected to peer pressure, either from their family or even from their landlord or another authority figure to fill out their ballot a certain way. However, no election is going to 100% perfect, and just because someone can point out a flaw doesn't mean the entire thing should be thrown out. In a similar vein, Democrats have (rightly) pointed out that gerrymandering can cause skewed results in House elections, yet I doubt many Republicans would say that means results would need to be nullified especially if Democrats had just lost. These things are something to discuss and reform for future elections.
People who do buy at least some of the object-level claims that Trump or Giuliani has advanced about 2020 being stolen. There's certainly a gish-gallop to choose from. The clearest meta-evidence that these are nonsense is that nearly everyone I've debated with has chosen a different set of claims to really dig deep into. For most political issues, parties tend to organically rally around a few specific examples that have the best evidence or emotional valence. The fact that this hasn't happened for Trump's claims is indicative that none of them are really that good, and they rely more on the reader being unfamiliar with them to try to spin a biased story. One example occurred a few weeks ago on this site, one user claimed the clearest examples were Forex markets (which were subsequently ignored), Ruby Freeman, and the Cyber Ninja's Audit. I was only vaguely aware of these, so I did a quick Google search and found a barrage of stories eviscerating the Ruby Freeman and Cyber Ninja narratives. I then asked for the response, preferably with whatever relatively neutral sources he could find, since I was sure he'd claim the sources I had Googled were all hopelessly biased. But this proved too high a bar to clear for him, and so the conversation went nowhere. Maybe there's a chance that some really compelling evidence exists out there that would easily prove at least some of the major allegations correct, but at this point I doubt it.
At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable. The big question on the Republican side now would be whether to claim the elections were rigged even if Trump DOES win. The stock explanation would be that the Dems are rigging it so they have +20% more votes than they normally would, so a relatively close election means Trump actually won by a huge margin. On the other hand, saying the election was rigged at all could diminish Trump's win no matter what, and it's not hard to imagine Trump claiming "this was the most legitimate election in the history of our country" if he manages to come out on top.
Every time someone tries to dismiss concerns about, call it 'election integrity," I would point them to the 2018 Election, specifically the Florida Gubernatorial Race. Specifically, Broward County.
An audit of the election was held and determined there were numerous irregularities, even if no actual fraud was detected
The margin between Desantis winning (and all the stuff that followed) vs. Gillum winning (instead of being found drugged out in a hotel room) was 33,000 votes out of 8 million. .4%.
Desantis cleaned house of election supervisors who had delayed or faulty counts, and every election since then has been reported on time, without error, and... surprise, tends to favor Republicans, now.
So one big thing that can be done is to rapidly remove and replace election officials who show questionable performance, bias, or otherwise don't seem interested in a fair, open election. Failure in one's duties should be punished, as I keep on harping.
You know what would really increase trust in elections? If there were somebody or bodies who is actually on the hook, who can be visibly and tangibly punished if a given election has too many 'hitches.' Because fundamentally, the people in charge of ensuring elections are secure ALSO have a bit of incentive to compromise said elections if it serves them. See this Judge in Philadelphia, for instance.
As others have said, ID requirements to cast a vote are reasonable. Limiting mail-in ballots, likewise reasonable. The big one is to ensure transparency when counting votes in high-density, high population areas, where fraud would be easiest to hide.
And there is a reasonable case to be made for areas reporting their results at about the same time. Fraud is harder to achieve if you can't be sure how many votes you have to manufacture to put your side over the top, so being able to report your results after you know what other have reported helps shift the incentives towards cheating.
On the 'unreasonable* side, maybe mandate the death penalty for anyone caught falsifying more than, say, 100 votes. There should certainly be some entity or agency who is in charge of tracking down and punishing election fraud after the election has taken place, so fraudsters can be punished even after the fact. I would even stipulate that the election is not to be overturned if substantial fraud is discovered, but those who perpetrated it should be sanctioned heavily as an example going forward, potentially to include the aforementioned capital punishment.
There should probably be some symmetrical punishment for those who attempt to overturn an election without producing proof of fraud, since that is also damaging to election integrity, false claims of 'rigging' can be 'allowed' but there should be some well-understood process through which such challenges are brought and decided.
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