Jessica Anthony

Because we need lawmakers, not lawbreakers

Where I live and teach in Maine, Jared Golden, a Democrat, is a member of the House of Representatives. Early this past July, before Biden stepped down, Golden said, “Trump will win, and I’m okay with that.” He then clarified his view. Democracy would not fail, he said, because “no man is strong enough to take it away from us.”

It reminded me of something an eighteen-year-old boy once said in my classroom. It was November 7, 2016. A strange day. It was hard to know how to feel. A few students in my class were weeping. This boy laughed at them. He had spoken with his father on election night, he said, and his father explained that “America has checks and balances,” and “one man can’t destroy democracy.”

I beg to differ. 

We all know what Trump wants to do. The Supreme Court, which he has stacked, has rewarded him with extraordinary immunity. He has said multiple times this summer, “You won’t have to vote anymore.” And JD Vance has given us every reason to believe that he would override the will of the people if given the power to do so. Last February, George Stephanopoulos asked Vance: “Had you been vice president on January 6, would you have certified the election results?”

Vance replied that he would not have recertified the election. “If I had been vice president,” he said, “I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there.”

Because of January 6, Congress actually had to pass a law stating outright that the position of the vice president in the proceedings of counting electoral votes is ceremonial. 

I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz because they will not rouse people into fanaticism. They will not turn America into Russia. They will weird the extremists back into their little corner. I am voting for Harris and Walz because if they are voted into office, and if in four years they are voted out, they will not attempt to hijack our elections in an attempt to create an autocracy in the United States to protect themselves against criminal liability. 

I am voting for the lawmakers, not the lawbreakers.

Jessica Anthony is the author of four books of fiction, recently The Most (Little, Brown & Co.).