Source: Politics<\/p>\n
NAZARETH, Pennsylvania \u2014 Earlier this month, 15 voters in this closely contested area of Pennsylvania convened to discuss the state of American democracy.<\/p>\n
To say they were discouraged as the 2024 election gets underway would be an understatement.<\/p>\n
Three years after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, half of the voters in the focus group immediately started nodding when asked about the possibility of violence around the election.<\/p>\n
Sitting around folding tables in an arts center just off of the small town\u2019s Rockwell-esque Main Street, the voters painted a bleak picture over the next hour: A largely negative view on everything from trusting that their and their neighbors\u2019 votes will be fairly counted, the speed it takes to get results and that those results will be accepted by the losers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI almost feel numb to it,\u201d Jackie, a younger voter in the focus group, said of the violence on Jan. 6. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have another election, could that happen again? I probably won\u2019t even react the same, because I\u2019m like \u2018this is what happens.\u2019 \u2026 Something\u2019s probably going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The focus group was brought together by Keep Our Republic, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that seeks to educate the public about strengthening the democratic system. It was convened in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a swing county in one of the most important swing states in the nation.<\/p>\n
The participants’ pessimism encapsulates one of the most pressing challenges in American politics right now \u2014 the loss of public trust in democracy itself and the electoral infrastructure that supports it. It is a problem that stretches far beyond just Nazareth; a Gallup poll<\/a> released the day after the focus group found that a record low 28 percent of American adults are satisfied with the way democracy is working in this country.<\/p>\n Their distrust comes at a moment of intense polarization in America \u2014 and after former President Donald Trump has spread constant lies about the security of American elections in the three years since the Capitol riot.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody agreed on one thing: That there’s a very good chance there’s gonna be violence in the next election,\u201d said former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who sits on the state advisory board of Keep Our Republic. \u201cThere’s a heightened sense of, or concern about, civil disorder in the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n The voters in the focus group are, in a literal sense, the mythological \u201cMain Street\u201d swing voters that politicians talk about in their stump speeches. Christopher Borick, a pollster and professor at nearby Muhlenberg College, selected them from his neighbors who lived on or near the town\u2019s Main Street.<\/p>\n The group was overwhelmingly white, like both the town of Nazareth and Northampton County more broadly, but was otherwise emblematic of the voters who will decide 2024. They were all registered voters \u2014 and those who said how they voted in 2020 during the focus group seemed evenly divided between Trump and President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n Borick asked them to participate because he never saw a political sign pop up on their front lawns. POLITICO observed the focus group under the condition that voters would be identified by their first names only.<\/p>\n The focus group came just a day before Biden gave a speech near Valley Forge, about an hour\u2019s drive away, on the state of the country\u2019s democracy<\/a>. There, the president cast the 2024 election as a referendum that will decide \u201cwhether democracy is still America\u2019s sacred cause.\u201d<\/p>\n But the focus group made clear that much of the distrust in the democratic system is rooted in the broader political polarization of the moment.<\/p>\n Borick often tried to steer the conversation away from the politics of the 2024 election to the mechanics of it, but participants consistently returned to their displeasure in another Biden-Trump rematch.<\/p>\n Almost to a person there was a wariness \u2014 and in some cases an outright distrust\u2014 of the democratic process in the county. Two voters, distinctly in the minority, repeated conspiracy theories popularized by Trump about mail ballots being used to steal the election from him. And roughly a third of participants said they believed unregistered people were casting ballots.<\/p>\n But more broadly, the participants were confused by the process, with complaints especially about the time it takes to know the winner. Pennsylvania did not allow for election officials to pre-process mail ballots in 2020 \u2014 a significant cause of the state\u2019s elongated vote count \u2014 and is now an outlier state that hasn\u2019t updated its laws to allow<\/a> for it in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent can tally 50 million votes in 15 minutes,\u201d Mike, a middle-aged engineer, joked during the focus group. \u201cHow can we not elect officials effectively, and not feel confident? Across the board, I don\u2019t feel a lot of confidence here that all of our votes are getting counted properly.\u201d<\/p>\n Northampton voters\u2019 suspicions are fueled by a string of recent election administration failures. In recent municipal elections, election machines have faltered twice: In 2019, initial vote totals<\/a> showed a candidate who would go on to narrowly win their contest only initially get less than 200 votes across some 55,000 ballots. And just last year, the printout of a person\u2019s ballot would in some cases display the wrong selection on judicial retention elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n In both cases, election officials stressed that the final outcomes were correct. A paper trail backup was used to count the votes in 2019, and election officials said last year\u2019s erroneous printouts were due to human error when programming the machines and that they were able to correctly tally<\/a> the final count as voters intended.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they tell me they\u2019re working, I am hoping they\u2019re working,\u201d Jimmy, another participant in the group, said of the voting machines. \u201cI try to be optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n But election officials and groups like Keep Our Republic face a tough climb ahead, even in counties that did not have demonstrable problems like Northampton did.<\/p>\n Keep Our Republic\u2019s theory is that the group can reverse \u2014 or at least slow \u2014 the declining trust in the democratic process by working with local leaders in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n