‘This is not just a Republican problem’: Crisis of trust looms in US elections
Bradley A. Smith is a professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. An authority on election law and campaign finance, he is a co-author of the casebook “Voting Rights and Election Law” and author of “Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform.”
Between 2000 and 2005, he served as commissioner, vice chairman, and then chairman of the Federal Election Commission, in a seat designated for a Republican. (By law, no more than three of the FEC’s six commissioners can represent one political party.)
Mr. Smith believes that declining trust in elections is a threat to the nation’s democracy. He says that Democrats are to some extent to blame for this decline, as well as Republicans, and that the problem is so broad and deep that it is unlikely to disappear if former President Donald Trump fades from the political scene.
On the subject of voting rights, Mr. Smith says that casting a ballot in the United States should not be hard, but that it is not necessarily a problem if it causes voters some inconvenience – as long as that inconvenience is not targeted at any particular group.
“It’s not the worst thing in the world to stand in line next to your fellow citizens and think for a minute and look at them before you go
