By Becket Adams
Sunday, November 01, 2026
When investigating serious matters, do not do it by
halves.
To pinpoint a problem’s root causes and identify possible
fixes, it’s necessary to examine each side of the issue, not just the one that
is politically advantageous.
This is especially true when discussing matters as
serious as the effort to undermine faith in U.S. elections. And when it comes
to casting doubt on the elections, the shame and blame belong to many; no party
is free from sin. (One side may technically be guiltier than the other,
but that is a matter of degree.)
It is therefore hard to hear someone harp on just one of
the many purveyors of election distrust and leave it at that. What’s the point
of entertaining a skewed perspective?
Thus, when the Washington Post publishes a report
titled “How Trump and his allies are sowing doubt ahead of the midterms,”
which rightly accuses President Trump and his Mos Eisley Cantina band of
hangers-on of undermining Republicans’ faith in elections, one cannot help but
ask whether the report will stop at the White House or include the whole
picture — whether it will spare a word for what is happening on the other side
of the aisle.
Forty-one percent of Kamala Harris voters believe Trump
did not legitimately win a second term, according to YouGov data. The share of Democrats who
believe votes will be counted accurately fell from 75 percent in 2022 to 55
percent in 2026, according to an AP-NORC survey. Separately, Pew found that the share of Democrats who say they’re
“confident mail and absentee votes will be counted as voters intend” dropped
from 88 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year. Pew also found that 72 percent
of Democratic supporters believe this week’s elections will be “well-run,” down
from a peak of 90 percent in 2024.
Yet none of this is mentioned in the Post’s report
on efforts to undermine faith in the U.S. electoral process. Rather, the story
focuses only on Trump and his allies. It mentions Democrats only in reference
to their supposed efforts to protect elections.
The New York Times did the same recently in an
article titled “Trump Relies on Falsehoods to Cast Doubt on Elections,”
concentrating solely on the president and sidestepping the mirrored phenomena
on the Democratic side.
But if we want a serious conversation about attacks on
election integrity, we have to cover all the threats, not just the one from the
White House. We must ask: “What about the rest of the story?” “Who is pushing
Democratic doubt?”
It is not “whataboutism” to ask these questions — it is
simply the pursuit of the whole picture.
The left’s concern about elections stems largely from the
same sources keen to highlight Trump’s anti-election chicanery: Democrats and
the press, which may explain the one-sided reporting.
Go to a Trump rally or spend a moment with the
president’s boosters on the podcast circuit and you will hear plenty of
questions and doubts about the electoral process. But open your paper, turn on
late-night television, or catch almost any Democratic press conference, and you
will get more of the same, just from the other direction.
Last week, the New York Times posed a serious question in a
headline: “If Democrats Win Congress, Could the G.O.P. Refuse to Seat Them?”
At MS NOW, Joe Scarborough worried whether Elon Musk or other
“trillionaires” might try to “hack the results” of the midterm elections.
At ABC, late-night host and Democratic booster Jimmy Kimmel
urged his viewers to “get out and vote” before adding, “Assuming the Trump
administration allows the states to count the votes.”
Then there is the Washington Post again, which published an
anonymously sourced report titled “U.S. officials privately advise states
fearing Trump election meddling.”
The story names no individuals, titles, or offices. It
refers only obliquely to having reviewed “some of the documents” prepared for
the aforementioned private meetings. It does not identify which states the
nameless “U.S. officials” — who, the Post notes, “have previously
focused on countering authoritarianism abroad” — are supposedly advising. With
the thinnest of sourcing, the article tells readers they need to be scared, and
that they need to question whether the elections will be on the up-and-up come
November.
All of this is in addition to the long-running effort by
Democratic lawmakers and luminaries to challenge and undermine election
integrity.
Just last week, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom accused Justice
Department employees of conspiring to “steal this election” and claimed there
is “no question” in his mind that Trump is going to try to “steal votes.”
Elsewhere, Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York said
Republicans would try “any diabolical scheme to prevent November 3 from being a
free and fair election.”
If we reach a little further back, we get failed
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has done more than most to advance
the conspiracy theory that the Russians robbed her at the ballot box, and
failed gubernatorial candidate and media darling Stacey Abrams, who has yet to
provide the conclusive evidence she promised would show she was cheated in the
2018 Georgia governor’s race.
Election denialism was especially bad in 2000, when
Democrats, including the late Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida,
launched an effort to block the certification of George W. Bush as president.
There were registered objections during the certification process, claims of
voter fraud, and even a congressional walkout.
“I object to the certificate from Florida,” Hastings said
on the House floor. Speaking to then–Vice President Al Gore, he added, “Mr.
President, and I take great pride in calling you that, I must object because of
the overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an
attempt to suppress voter turnout.”
After Bush was declared the legitimate victor, a downcast
Hastings turned to Gore and said, “We did all we could, Mr. President.”
To this day, a substantial number of Democrats remain
convinced that Bush stole the 2000 election and that the Supreme Court helped
him do it.
In fact, Al Gore still occasionally plays the king-in-exile
routine, including during the 2016 election when he urged supporters to get and
out vote because, “I don’t want you to be in a position year from now where you
welcome Hillary Clinton and say, ‘Actually, you did win. It just wasn’t close
enough to make sure that all the votes were counted’ or whatever.”
If one didn’t know better, one would think that the
Democratic rubric is this: elections are legitimate only when they win. Don’t
laugh: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested as much in
2019 when she declared, without evidence, that “massive voter suppression”
efforts had robbed Abrams of the governor’s mansion in Georgia, and that
Republicans resort to such dirty tactics because “they know that if all the
votes are counted, we’ll win every time.”
When we debate serious matters, we cannot do it by
halves. Yet that’s exactly what we see done repeatedly in news coverage. How
can one write an entire news report about attacks on election integrity and
omit half of the story?
We cannot talk about gerrymandering without inviting
readers to examine Illinois’s congressional map. We cannot talk about Supreme
Court voting habits without noting that the conservatives cross over to vote
with the liberals roughly 100 percent more often than the reverse.
And we cannot talk about election integrity concerns
without mentioning the culture of doubt that Democrats and members of the press
have indulged for nearly every major election cycle since before 9/11, from
straight news reports to “comedy shows.”
To tell only one half of the story suggests you do not
care about the problem; you care only about landing a clean hit on your
political rival.
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