Remember when presidential election years didn’t come with feelings of dread?

We may have complained about the unceasing political advertisements, but the presidential debates, the party conventions and each voting fixture on the calendar offered an opportunity to watch as, state by state, Americans decided whom they’d choose as their parties’ presidential nominees. It was democracy in action and though it could be nerve-racking and tedious, it also inspired faith in the durability of our electoral system.

The confidence most of us used to feel about democracy’s staying power was shattered Jan. 6, 2021, when a president who’d lost his reelection bid incited thousands of his supporters to try to violently halt a step in the process of peacefully transferring presidential power.

Now that same person is vying for the White House again, even as we’re still trying to recover from the 2020 election and its lingering effects: the seeds of distrust he and his minions planted about our election processes; the toll that ginned-up distrust took on election officials; the new assumption that election results from here on out will be disputed and subjected to disinformation, legal challenges and illegal attempts to overturn them.

As Spotlight PA reported, election directors worry the commonwealth is unprepared for what lies ahead, and said there are “a few concrete changes that would shore up Pennsylvania’s system against frivolous fraud allegations” as the 2024 election approaches.

County election officials want to be able to pre-canvass mailed ballots - that is, inspect, open and count them, but not record or publish the results - before 7 a.m. on Election Day. This is not a big ask, or one with any partisan implications, but polarization in Harrisburg has sunk efforts to make it happen.

According to Spotlight PA’s reporting, the state’s Election Code is old and needs to be updated for this electronic age. But getting the state Legislature to pass election reform has been a Sisyphean struggle. Bills that might garner bipartisan support often are doomed when partisan provisions are tacked on.

“They just literally can’t pass a bill that is nondescript, it’s like it’s not in their DNA. And I do not understand why,” Thad Hall, director of elections in Mercer County, told Spotlight PA.

We understand why, and it’s tragic.

Any attempts to make elections run more smoothly this year would make Republican lawmakers a target for harassment from the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. Consider the pressure that was exerted on state House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler, of Drumore Township, when he was House speaker, to try to overturn the 2020 Pennsylvania election results. As Cutler told the U.S. House select committee that investigated the events of Jan. 6, his refusal to subvert democracy brought protesters to his district office and home, and his personal contact information was published online.

Even benign election changes seem unachievable at this point.

For instance, officials told Spotlight PA that they’d like to see an earlier deadline for requesting a mail ballot - voters currently can apply for a mail ballot up to a week before Election Day.

While we think voters should have as much time as possible to request mail-in ballots, we saw in the most recent election - when the U.S. Postal Service failed to deliver 268 completed mail ballots to the Lancaster County elections office in time for them to be counted - that there needs to be some cushion in case the process breaks down at any point.

Forrest Lehman, the director of elections in Lycoming County, told Spotlight PA that his primary concern is strengthening the system against misinformation and “protecting our postelection processes and our certification processes from people who want to prevent democracy from functioning.”

Like other county election officials in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Lehman had to deal with dubious recount requests, onerous records requests and litigation from election-deniers who had swallowed the Big Lie that the presidential election had been stolen.

Lehman told Spotlight PA that he wants the state Legislature to update the cost to file a recount petition from $50 (a price set in the Election Code decades ago) to more than $1,000, today’s equivalent sum adjusted for inflation. This seems very reasonable, given the staffing costs of administering a recount.

The Lycoming County director of elections believes there should be a penalty for counties that fail to certify elections. And he suggests that there be specific criminal penalties for anyone who harasses or tries to intimidate county election officials and poll workers.

State lawmakers ought to be working across the aisle to protect elections in our commonwealth. Elected leaders in Pennsylvania - the birthplace of American democracy - should feel a special responsibility to help save it. Free, fair and secure elections are essential; if we lose them, we’ll lose everything.

LNP/LancasterOnline