In retrospect, the biggest news story from 1960 may have been one that got buried in many newspapers. It was a joint statement from Richard Nixon’s press secretary and presidential campaign manager, saying Nixon would not challenge John F. Kennedy’s election to the White House.
Yes, it’s hard to win arguments by appealing to former President Richard Nixon’s virtues, but his eventual resignation many years later, after the Watergate scandal, makes his actions on that Nov. 11, three days after Election Day, all the more powerful. If even Nixon could put the needs of the country ahead of his own ambitions and the urgings of many supporters, what does that say about a subset of Republican candidates today who have trouble answering whether they will accept election results?
As I write this, Utah gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman has yet to concede to incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox, despite trailing in the count by roughly 13 percentage points. That is a wide margin — a gap, as I write this, of about 40,000 votes.
In the four-way race for Senate, all three losing candidates have conceded to the winner, John Curtis. Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs, the second-place finisher, was the last to do so on Thursday.
Election concessions are an important American tradition. Nothing in law compels a candidate to formally concede, nor does the refusal to do so affect the outcome in any way. But the effect is cathartic to the pent-up emotions of a campaign.
To be fair, Lyman has said he wants to analyze all the results first. That is understandable. Ballots remain to be counted.
However, he also has attorneys looking at potential lawsuits. Implied is a lack of trust in the election process, or in its ability to catch large-scale fraud.
Trusting the election process is, of course, paramount for any democracy that vests political power in the hands of voters. Lose that trust and you risk losing everything.
Just as important, however, is the need to unite voters after a difficult election season.
The orderly passage of power, and the orderly retention of power, is a vital American attribute. It’s just as important in state offices, from the smallest school board to the mansions of governors, as it is in deciding who occupies the White House.
It reveals who we are as a people and whether we can subjugate the pursuit of power to the greater good of community, state or nation. It signals to partisan followers that they can lay aside animosities for a season and accept the will of voters, a will that presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan told the winner, William McKinley, in his 1896 concession telegram, “is law.”
Think of how soothing it was to hear Al Gore, after weeks of grueling recounts and a difficult Supreme Court ruling, say, “What remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his (George W. Bush’s) stewardship of this country.”
Despite current narratives, voter fraud is rare, particularly in Utah.
A recent KSL-TV investigation found that only 32 cases of alleged fraud have been prosecuted in Utah since 2012, totaling 58 charges.
Derek Monson, chief growth officer at the conservative Sutherland Institute, told me the nation’s election system, in which 3,143 separate counties conduct elections using separate laws, methods and policies, makes it almost impossible to conduct fraud on a scale that could alter an election. The same could be said for Utah’s 29 counties. The number of people needed to pull off such a thing would be prohibitive.
Nixon no doubt felt he had a lot of reasons to contest that 1960 election, even though he had conceded on election night. There were rumors that 50,000 ballots had been thrown out in Texas because of technicalities. Voters in one area were confused by a system requiring them to scratch out the names of each candidate they did not want, leaving only the name of the candidate they voted for untouched.
More rumors swirled in Illinois, where the candidates were separated by only 9,000 votes.
But Nixon called everything off, reportedly telling a friend, “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.”
That may be ironic, considering what eventually happened to his administration 14 years later, but it did diffuse tensions in 1960.
No, concessions aren’t a required part of our electoral process, but I hope we eventually hear them in all races this year. At a time when political tensions are tinder-dry, they might keep people from lighting matches.