The cover of the new issue of the Economist magazine pinpoints what its editors see as “the real risk to America’s democracy.” The editors write, “For Democrats the threat to elections is about who can cast votes. . . . Instead, the real threat comes after votes have been cast.”
Pointing to state-level changes that could strip local officials of their powers and replace election administrators with partisan lawmakers, the magazine notes that such provisions “might seem like distant, bureaucratic changes. In fact, they raise the chances of a contested election that the courts cannot sort out. They weaken America’s voting system in ways that will outlast the hysteria over the 2020 result.”
This “infection of partisanship” in the administration of elections, as Stanford University Professor Nate Persily calls it, is something new, as is the pressure on local election officials from partisan legislators and from an angry Trump base.