The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-12)

B2 EZ BD K THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022

serve as an excuse for someone like Mastriano to claim that Trump is the real winner. If the role of federal courts is clarified by new legislative language, however, judges could intervene to determine that Biden actually won the state and that there was no fraud that rendered the election results sus- pect. Other changes to the Electoral Count Act would also help. A new set of rules could state definitively that the vice president, who pre- sides over the Jan. 6 counting of electoral college votes, has no power to deprive Con- gress of lawfully submitted slates of electors — contrary to the outlandish argument made by the lawyer John Eastman, formerly of Chap- man University. Vice President Mike Pence declined in 2021 to attempt the scheme floated by Eastman and urged by Trump, but these decisions should not be left up to individual leaders. Reforms of the law along these lines would benefit both parties. After all, it will be Vice President Harris who will preside over the counting of electoral college votes on Jan. 6,

Say the presidential election hinges on
Georgia, and Trump is narrowly declared the
winner of that state — and there are allega-
tions of vote suppression. Feeling pressured to
not present Georgia’s votes to Congress for
counting, Harris could purport to determine
that suppression rendered the state’s election
unfair, allowing her to throw out the Georgia
results.

recounted in the event of an election dispute, provide adequate funding for fair elections, increase protection of election workers and officials against harassment and violence, and stiffen criminal penalties for interfering with official election proceedings. (Some of these provisions, like the paper-ballot requirement, were in the Freedom to Vote Act, which Democrats failed to get through the Senate this year.) But revision of the Electoral Count Act may prove especially important. Imagine that 2024 features a rematch between Trump and Presi- dent Biden, and Biden once again narrowly prevails in Arizona and Pennsylvania. By that year, those states may have as their governors two leaders who embrace the “big lie” that Biden’s victory was fraudulent: Doug Mastria- no, the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania, and Kari Lake, who is making a strong bid to be the Republican nominee in Arizona. One or both could reject a state vote tally favoring Biden and attempt to send in an alternate slate of electors in 2024 favoring Trump. On what basis could they try to reject a vote of the people? As Politico has reported, the Republican Party is instructing volunteer poll workers on how to challenge voters on Elec- tion Day, teaching them to report any issues at polling places directly to GOP-affiliated lawyers rather than to their poll-worker superi- ors. This disruption of the chain of command in state election machinery could easily lead to chaos and confusion, which then could

Such a move seems very unlikely, because the vice president has never indicated that she would not follow the law. But we should not have to rely on conscience — and we don’t know the ethics of some future vice president who will preside over the Senate. The Electoral Count Act says a challenge to electors can proceed if one member from each chamber (House and Senate) agrees. That threshold should be raised significantly. Con- gress can clarify, too, that challenges to electors must focus on such constitutional issues as the eligibility of candidates, not on dis- agreement over vote totals. Moreover, Con- gress can specify that a “failed” election — language used in the current act to specify an instance when state legislatures might need to step in — refers to elections thwarted by, for example, a natural disaster, not by false claims of voter fraud or irregularities. By showing precisely what went wrong in 2020, and which safeguards held, the committee hearings can make clear to the public the need for new legislation. The story of 2020, the hearings will reveal, is that a few heroic Republicans and Democrats acting in good faith — such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — protected our election process from subversion despite our murky and byzantine laws. Just as important, the hearings should try to rally public opinion about the need for Congress to act to protect free and fair elections. Americans may have different views about abortion, taxes, climate change and immigration. But we should all agree that American elections should be conducted so that all eligible voters, but only eligible voters, may easily vote; ballots are accurately count- ed; and the winner assumes power. In January, after Democrats failed to pass major voting rights reform, reports emerged that Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) were in talks aimed at combating election subversion by, among other things, fixing the Electoral Count Act. There are some indications that a Senate deal may be close. And USA Today reports that two Jan. 6 committee members, Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), are near- ing agreement on their own reform package. Given inflation, arguments over gun violence, the resurgence of the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine, it would be quite easy for election legislation to fall off the agenda. That would put American democracy in serious danger, even if most Americans don’t realize it. The window is closing on the chance to protect the 2024 presidential election from interference. But if the Jan. 6 committee conducts its hearings effectively, it will improve the odds that our democracy can be safeguarded in time.

T

he special House committee hearings investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — which began Thursday night, in prime time — are serving multiple purposes: They are revealing evidence that could be used to file criminal charges for attempted election subversion against some of former president Donald Trump’s lawyers, against people who tried to manipulate the count of electoral college votes and potentially against Trump himself. They have begun to provide the most comprehensive account yet of the unprec- edented attempt by Trump and his allies to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election. But the most important thing the hearings, which will continue into July, can do — given that, if someone tries to steal the next election, they won’t do it precisely the way Trump and his allies tried in 2020 — is to shift our gaze forward: They can highlight continuing vulnerabilities in our electoral system and pro- pose ways to fix them, before it is too late. The hearings also represent the best chance to galvanize public support to address these weak points, which is important, because the window for passing such legislation is closing: If Republicans retake the House in November, they will never put forth bills that imply the country needs protection from Trump, their kingmaker. If these hearings don’t spur action by this summer or fall, expect Congress to do nothing before the 2024 elections, at which point American democracy will be in great danger. Any attempt to subvert the next presidential election is likely to be far more efficient and ruthlessly targeted than the last effort. It will be focused on holes and ambiguities in the arcane rules for counting electoral college votes set forth in the Constitution and in a poorly written 1887 law, the Electoral Count Act. There’s much that can be done to fix those problems, as a diverse group of prominent legal scholars, convened by the American Law Institute and including former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer and former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn, has suggested. To begin with, Congress can revise the Electoral Count Act to create a more robust role for federal courts in making sure that states follow their own rules for picking the winner of their electoral college votes. Courts are not perfect, but they stood strong in 2020 against more than 60 attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn election results, and they are the best hope to deal fairly with any future conflict over the rightful winner of a state’s electoral college votes. Congress should also mandate that voting machines produce paper ballots that could be

The Jan 6. committee should be looking ahead to election threats in 2024

Fixing vulnerabilities in the system is crucial, argues law professor Richard L. Hasen

Twitter: @rickhasen

Richard L. Hasen is the chancellor’s professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine and the author of “Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics and How to Cure It.”

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST

A video clip of President Donald Trump speaking at a rally on Jan. 6, 202 1, plays during Thursday night’s hearing of the House committee investigating the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The hearing presented evidence of Trump’s attempts to remain in power, even though he had lost the election.

ating and demeaning encounters with under- trained and often rude security personnel. The greatest loss is to the ideal of public space as a meeting place free of authoritarian intrusion or oversight, a locus for the free flow of ideas and a leveling ground where some distant memory of “all men are created equal” is felt and enjoyed by citizens of an increasing- ly unequal polity. Universal, unregulated access to guns makes public space untenable. No matter how robust the fortification, mass murderers will find the gaps, reducing the entire public realm to an ungovernable Hob- besian hellscape of perpetual violence. Indi- vidual buildings will no longer be stitched together in an urban unity but isolated in a sea of mayhem. This is how ancient empires collapsed — with myriad small-scale efforts to fortify and defend public spaces that were no longer governable by larger entities. This isn’t an overheated dystopian day- dream. Because we can’t address the single, obvious and most effective solution to the problem — limiting civilian access to weapons of war — we are stuck in a civic feedback loop. Mass murder fuels calls for hardening space, which not only fails to prevent mass murder

link a procession of courtyards at the Forbid- den City in Beijing. With money, and design insight, some of these architectural responses can be disguised as aesthetic enhancements. The 2005 rede- sign of the Washington Monument grounds by the Olin Studio defends the obelisk against car bombings with low granite security walls elegantly embedded in the 72-acre green space. One hardly notices them. But the changes coming may be far more intrusive. The extensive retrofitting of our civic infrastructure will not only take an environmental toll, as buildings are razed and rebuilt or wholly renovated, it will continue to sort institutions into those with resources to do things well and those that must make do with provisional, haphazard and insufficient remedies. It will further enhance the power of security experts, who at the behest of our leaders have already robbed Americans of essential public places, including the west terrace of the U.S. Capitol and the front entrance to the Supreme Court. And it will further corrode democracy, as more and more people, at all stages of life, from preschool to senescence, are forced into repeated, humili-

cal leaders envision children passing through military-style checkpoints every morning before school. “Andrew will harden the schools,” former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said of his son, who is running for governor, adding that as mayor he himself had put “cops in every classroom” (he put unarmed school safety officers in each school). None of the efforts to harden public space will actually do what we need them to do. Architects can improve security within buildings to a degree, but this is mainly through slowing rather than preventing access for attackers. The margin of improvement could be incremental changes to the body count. In future shootings, perhaps only a half-dozen children will die, rather than 19 at Uvalde, or 20 at Newtown, Conn., or 14 at Parkland, Fla. But even that is doubtful, because gunmen will follow the crowds. Mass shooters are domestic terrorists, and they will be as re- sourceful as the suicide bomber in Afghani- stan who blew up a crowd last summer outside a Kabul checkpoint as U.S. troops attempted to screen people entering Hamid Karzai International Airport. Or they will follow the lead of the most lethal single mass shooter in U.S. history, who killed 58 people and wounded more than 400 at an open-air country music event in Las Vegas. Ultimately, the goal of defending internal spaces against gun violence may be obsolete, as Second Amendment absolutists push to erase any distinction between gun-free and fully armed spaces. Architects have been responding to these threats for years, with curiously atavistic changes to the built environment. After the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the old school was razed and rebuilt with security enhancements. Among them, the building was positioned to take advantage of high ground, to improve sight lines and increase the chances that intruders can be identified as they approach the school. Its entrance was fronted by a rain garden, spanned by three foot bridges, to slow and funnel access to the space. The first of these changes — improving sight lines — recalls one of the basic defense mechanisms of walled cities, fortresses, cas- tles and compounds, since humans first began living behind enclosed walls. The second response, a rain garden with three bridges, evokes an idea common to the pre-democratic design of aristocratic or court architecture. The new Sandy Hook school requires children to pass through a sequence of gateways for access, including bridges similar to those that

ARCHITECTURE FROM B1

Public space is getting

a ‘hard’ makeover

PATRICK RAYCRAFT/HARTFORD COURANT/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE/GETTY IMAGES

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was completely rebuilt after a mass shooting in 2012. The new building, designed by Svigals + Partners, includes safety features such as a rain garden that visitors must cross via foot bridge, as well as improved sight lines to spot possible intruders.

but corrodes the civic trust and rational thinking that might break the cycle. Does this mean an architecture of stone walls, turrets and moats? No, but it does mean the proliferation of their 21st-century equiva- lents, including surveillance cameras, robust security databases, facial recognition technol- ogy, artificial-intelligence systems, and, of course, “hardened” entrances, thicker walls, more safe rooms and one-way doors for egress — which may or may not work when you need them. More fundamentally, the nature of our relationship to buildings will change. Good buildings, especially schools, libraries, houses of worship and places of entertainment, used to greet us with a promise: Enter and learn, enter and pray, enter and engage with art, theater, dance or music. Now, they will greet us just as we greet our fellow citizens, with wariness and suspicion. Twitter: @PhilipKennicott

Philip Kennicott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of The Washington Post. He has been on staff at The Post since 1999, first as classical music critic, then as culture critic.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-12)

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