HILLARY GAVAN Senior staff writer. Beloit Daily News | Published on 1/29/2021
“The big question is how to restore confidence in the voting process, given we had this election where 60% of Republicans believe it was stolen.”
University of Wisconsin at Madison Political Science Professor David Canon will talk about that statement and more at The League of Women Voters of Beloit and of Janesville annual fundraising event set for Feb. 13. At the virtual event, Cannon will discuss the role of social media, private business and the Republican party in restoring trust as well as the history behind the idea of voter fraud.
In an interview on Monday, Canon shared some of the challenges for the country as it moves forward following allegations of the election being stolen, which culminated in violence in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Cannon said the role of conservative media, particularly talk radio and social media as well as Fox News to some extent, will help determine if voter confidence is restored and if other potential conspiracy theories can be constrained.
Cannon said social media and talk radio have become sources for a lot of misinformation and conspiracy theories that led to the violent response at the U.S. Capitol.
“Social media helped fuel that fire by repeating these false allegations,” he said.
Cannon said Facebook and Twitter also will play a role in controlling the spread of misinformation.
“They have all started to really get a handle on this by limiting the more violent type of chatter that is out there on social media. It’s going to be a long process to get this genie back in the bottle,” he said.
Canon said protecting free speech will continue to be a difficult balancing act. Although the United States has strong protections for freedom of speech and restrictions on censorship, those first amendment guidelines are placed on government entities and not necessarily private actors such as private business.
“Private actors can restrict speech if it’s harmful to their business model. Those limitations are acceptable under the first amendment,” he said.
He said it will be a tough balancing act for business, as discourse on political differences is the center of a free society. However, when those ideas cross the line into calls for violence, he said companies are within their rights to limit dangerous speech.
“The big social media companies are having a difficult time defining where that line is,” he said.
Canon said the country can move forward if more Republican leaders step forward to say President Joe Biden won the election such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney have done.
“We need to reconcile this and move on,” Canon said.
Canon said the Republican party is going to have to decide if it will excise the recent faction which supported the idea of a stolen election and return to the more traditional party of Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the late former Arizona U.S. Senator John McCain and former presidents such as the late George H. W. Bush and his son president George W. Bush.
Canon questioned if the faction will cause the party to split.
“We are going to see how that plays out in the next six months or so,” Cannon said.
Canon said the idea of voter fraud became more popular around 10 years ago when debate began regarding voter ID laws, with Republicans in favor or stricter laws and Democrats opposed to them.
“This started becoming more of a political issue because it became a partisan issue,” Cannon said.
The idea of voter fraud then gained momentum in the COVID-19 pandemic because of the options for early voting, including voting by mail.
With record numbers using the opportunity to vote by mail and former President Donald Trump’s remarks suggesting fraud, the idea was planted back in the summer before early voting began.
“It became clear this was something voters were using more. There was never any evidence voting by mail was a source of voter fraud,” he said.
However, Trump continued repeating the message of fraud.
Canon said safeguards were put in place to prevent voter fraud. For example, when one voted in person or requested a mail-in ballot, the person had to show identification and sign the voter log in Wisconsin. Mail-in ballots in Wisconsin required a signature and witness to sign the ballot.
Trump and allies filed 62 lawsuits around the country in state and federal court in an attempt to overturn election results in states where Trump lost. However, allegations of voter fraud never stood up to actual evidence.
“In every case but one, the Trump legal team lost. There never was any evidence of fraud,” he said.
In the one case, a Pennsylvania judge ruled voters could not go back and fix their ballots if they failed to provide proper identification three days after the election. However, the ruling didn’t change the election outcome in favor of Biden.
When Trump claimed fraud and other voting irregularities, top Republicans legislators in Wisconsin said they were reviewing thousands of complaints about the election. However, the majority of them were form letters with non-specific claims according to research by the Wisconsin State Journal. The newspaper was able to identify only 28 allegations of election fraud or other irregularities specific enough to verify. The newspaper could only partially substantiate one allegation, involving 42 votes, according to the Associated Press.