The Luck of Lansing
By: Dennis Sanders
Tags: Democrats, Politics, News, Election 2020, Elections

President Trump’s attempt to mess with the election integrity ended on Monday when the Michigan State Board of Canvassers certified the results of the election. What was unofficial is not official: Joe Biden won the Great Lake State’s 16 electoral votes, winning the popular vote by over 150,000 votes.

There is a lot of talk about how our system of laws held, keeping a wannabe authoritarian in check. I agree with this to a point, but I tend to think that as much as this was a triumph of the law, luck had a lot to do with this as well.

We want to think that history’s greatest moments have everything to do with great people who handle the crisis with great skill. That is part of the answer, but sometimes life hinges on a roll of the dice. Small actions by actors that many will forget can have as big an outcome as any of those great people. For example, when we think of the Cuban Missle Crisis, we might think of people like John and Robert Kennedy and Nikita Kruschev were the people who were able to sort through the mess and keep the world safe from nuclear war. But the peaceful end of the crisis was also the work of one Vasily Arkhipov.

Arkhipov was a commodore in the Soviet navy. He happened to be aboard the Soviet submarine B-59. An American naval carrier knew a Russian sub was below and start sending depth charges to force it up to the surface. The B-59 was not in contact with Moscow and had no idea if a war had started or not. As the depth charges kept exploding the captain of the B-59 was certain the war had started. He wanted to launch the nuclear missile aboard the submarine. Now, normally to launch the missile the captain and the commander had to agree. Both agreed to launch the missile. But there was also another person aboard that got to decide, Vasily Arkhipov. He was the commodore over a flotilla of submarines in the Caribbean and he voted no. Arkhipov was able to persuade the captain to stand down. Had the missile been launched, nuclear war would have commenced. While the leaders of both nations were able to prevent war through their diplomatic skills, the person who actually saved the world was Arkhipov. Had he not been on the B-59, the missile would have launched and a global conflagration would have commenced.

What saved America from having an election overturned by any means rested on a few Republican officials in several states who just did their jobs. This includes people like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who ignored the demands of the state’s two Senators and the Senator from a neighboring state and went ahead to certified Georgia’s votes. In Michigan, it all came down to one member of the board of state canvassers: Republican Aaron Van Langevelde, a lawyer from outside of Lansing, the state capitol. The state canvassing board was made up of 4 people, 2 from each party. The other Republican on the board made up his mind to not certify the election. So the American experiment hung on the decision of a 40-year-old man.

“We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” Van Langevelde said as reported by Tim Alberta in his riveting account of the election aftermath in Michigan. “As John Adams once said, ‘We are a government of laws, not men.’ This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.”

With that, the board-certified, the election, and Donald Trump’s norm-breaking presidency was over.

Did the law work here? Yes. But it’s important to remember something: laws only work if people believe in them. What if Rafensperger or Van Langevelde decided to do what so many other Republican officials had done by catering to the wishes of President Trump?

I’m thankful that our system created 250 years ago worked. But just like the world averted nuclear war because of one naval officer, the integrity of American democracy was saved by officials that saw their job was more important than trying to salve the president’s ego.

Sometimes life does come down to a roll of the dice. This time we dodged a bullet. Next time, America might not be so lucky.