United States | Heads we win, tails you cheated

America’s battle over election laws

The conflict over democracy has escalated since Donald Trump’s exit from the White House

|WASHINGTON, DC

AFTER THE Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012, a period of gloomy introspection set in. The party commissioned an excoriating report. “Devastatingly, we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who don’t agree with us,” it declared. The lesson the Republican Party learned from 2020 is different. There has been no comparable period of inquiry. Instead, the party has found another culprit for its disappointments—widespread election fraud—that it is now committed to rooting out.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Heads we win, tails you cheated”

Biden’s big gamble: What a $1.9 trillion stimulus means for the world economy

From the March 13th 2021 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from United States

American actor Jean Stapleton (right) points a toy gun with a flag that reads, 'Bang,' at American actor Carroll O'Connor, in a still from the television series 'All in the Family'.

Checks and Balance newsletter: What 1970s television reveals about America

Police officers at the scene of a crime in Brooklyn, New York

An alternative theory to explain America’s murder spike in 2020

What if it wasn’t about policing?


Cartoon of Donald Trump, wearing a feathered headdress, a cowboy hat, and a police hat, holding a globe with pins and a needle

Donald Trump’s defining decade

Will America’s president overcome the 1970s, or just refight its battles?


Donald Trump revives ideas of a Star Wars-like missile shield 

He wants a swarm of missile-toting satellites to take out incoming threats

America’s foreign aid pause puts lives at risk

Donald Trump sought disruption. He hurt America first.

Donald Trump goes to war with his employees

The president wants to shrink and remake the civil service