When politics becomes religion, everything suffers

Last week, Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson gave a speech about election security. His words were greeted by some as inspiring and treated by others with contempt. Within this wide range of reactions, we observe at least two troubling social and political trends.

On the one hand, individual reactions can be categorized according to whether the person believes in and wants to build the institutions that embody our constitutional values ​​– or whether they despise these institutions and equate their destruction with “reform.”

But another trend has penetrated deeper into our identities.

Arthur Brooks teaches (from a compelling behavioral science perspective) that politics has become, for many, their religion – and that this is an unsatisfying turn in devotion.

Traditional faith and philosophy are in measurable decline, particularly among young people. However, human psychology does not like a vacuum. People need a belief system. Today, people increasingly see their identity not in divine terms, but in political terms. Since morality stems from one’s deepest beliefs, making politics one’s religion means making social and political issues – and the power to control both – the motivation and justification for personal behavior. In this scenario, the end will always justify the means.

Yuval Levin adds (in an equally cogent and researched installment) that these social and political views erode trust in our oldest and most formative institutions – institutions we need to provide the structures and behaviors that sustain life. in a free society.

When people make politics their faith, a growing distrust of institutions is inevitable – as those with different political views now become enemies of the truth – and elections not only make it easier to express opinions different policies, but also a moral decline between good and evil. What was once considered a vice, such as attempts at political violence or threats of intimidation, is now twisted – in the name of the cause – to become virtue signaling despite malicious intent.

This confused and perverse view of institutions in general is detrimental to a republic, and nowhere is it more immediately destructive than when applied to something as basic to liberty as the election of representatives. Tried-and-true voting methods, such as Utah’s mail-in voting system, are subject to attempts at intimidation and violence against election officials, like the examples that motivated Henderson’s speech last week. But the moral distortions produced by politics as religion are, unsurprisingly, based on distortions of fact.

Utah has had mail-in voting for 20 years. The movement toward a primarily mail-in voting system began 10 years ago and grew from the bottom up between 2014 and 2020. Mail-in voting was not driven by manipulation at the top of government but by voters in county after county who slowly and willingly registered to benefit from the convenience and research made possible by receiving a ballot in the mail weeks before Election Day.

In Utah, this organic, bottom-up experiment with mail-in voting has made Utah’s election system one of the most secure in the country. Each ballot is tracked with a unique identification number assigned to a voter, the required signatures on each ballot are checked against a database of signatures available to that voter and voters can register to receive text messages that follow their ballot from the mailbox to the voting center.

Voters also have options that add more security. If a voter is unsure about mailing their ballot, they can drop it off in a secure, video-monitored drop box. If a voter has concerns about drop boxes, they can take their ballot directly to a voting center. Because of these security measures, even voter fraud databases run by those ideologically opposed to mail-in voting have shown no valid allegations of voter fraud in Utah since counties began adopting voting by correspondence.

The real irony is that the individual behaviors of those “called upon” to denounce dysfunction in Utah elections often represent the very dysfunction they deplore. If elected county clerks, in an effort to show their vulnerability, destroy ballots or manually disable security features on voting machines to “prove fraud,” they are destroying trust in a foundation of our guaranteed representative democracy by the Constitution which they took an oath to respect. . Such constitutional infidelity means they do not deserve to hold elected office.

As a free and functioning society, we can and must hold those we elect accountable. We should ask questions and demand answers. But people for whom politics has become a religion are trampling on the constitutional principles and values ​​they claim to cherish. It is up to Utah voters and elected officials to demonstrate the political courage and constitutional commitment to reject the poison of politics as religion by promoting confidence in Utah’s elections that is supported by the facts .

Rick Larsen is the President and CEO of Sutherland Institutea nonprofit public policy that promotes the constitutional values ​​of faith, family and liberty.