Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), who is trailing his primary opponent by 373 votes, plans to challenge the outcome and hopes to block certification of Lynchburg’s votes “due to his ‘lack of confidence’ in the results” (read story here).
“We’re going to be making the legal challenge in the next couple of days to demonstrate that Lynchburg, the biggest city, can’t be certified,” Good said. “Lynchburg is the big key. That can’t be certified. There’s no confidence in Lynchburg’s results from either side, quite frankly.”
Good previously complained about fire alarms in 3 of the district’s 223 polling locations, which election officials said didn’t interfere with voting; in one of those precincts, the disruption lasted only 15 minutes and no voters were in the building during that time.
His latest complaints are “chain of custody issues with the drop boxes for mail in ballots,” citing two city council candidates in close races “who brought up the same issue,” and “failure for observers to witness the opening of sealed, mailed-in ballots, and more.”
Let’s start at the top. Good is entitled to a recount, and to challenge the election in court, if and as provided by law. Those are the lawful avenues for redress of his grievances. But he will get nowhere with the “confidence” argument, and for good reasons.
Candidates and their supporters are entitled to a fair election conducted in accordance with election laws. They are not entitled to confidence in the results. “Confidence” is very subjective and can mean anything they want it to. If that was a test of an election’s validity, anyone could exploit it to overturn elections for bad reasons or no reasons at all, and chaos would ensue.
Taking a specific example, Trump lied that the 2020 election was stolen, and many of his supporters believed it, but that didn’t entitle them to a different result or a new election, which plainly would violate the rights of the winner’s supporters. (As a broad principle, people can believe whatever they like, and it doesn’t have to be true. But if they want others to accept their conclusions, they have to justify them.)
Nor is Good entitled to a perfect election. Recounts are effective to correct ballot counting errors. An election marred by serious irregularities can be challenged in court, and in some cases, courts have ordered new elections. But minor problems, which crop up in virtually all elections, aren’t grounds to overturn an election. The fire alarms fall in that category.
So does Good’s claimed observer problem, unless he can show a real problem that affected the results. Likewise, he has to show his “chain of custody” issue is both real and more than an inadvertent and inconsequential failure to follow some minor protocol that didn’t affect the results. Courts won’t scrap an election for harmless errors.
Now I want to come back to the “confidence” issue again, because it’s being used by Republicans across the country to demonize the democratic process and attack valid election outcomes. It’s up to them whether they have confidence in our elections, but that doesn’t give them a right to deprive other voters of their rights in election results.
Republicans gin up this lack of confidence among their supporters with propaganda, haranguing, and outright lies. Then they claim their supporters’ lack of confidence is grounds to throw out election results. It is a totally bogus claim, and one even Trump-appointed judges refused to entertain. Election laws and actual facts, not their fantasies and hurt feelings, determine the validity of election results.
From what I’ve seen so far, Good’s only realistic hope is that he overtakes his opponent in the vote counting, or in a recount, because his “lack of confidence” is meaningless and his other complaints are lacking in substance.