As I write this, it’s a cold and rainy Sunday morning, about 60 hours before the polls close here in Wisconsin. Those polls will be closed by the time you read this. The decision will have been made, even if we don’t know yet what that decision is. What concerns me in these few remaining hours before Election Day is whether or not we will have a peaceful transfer of power after the decision is announced.

My first memory of being interested in politics came in the first grade when Mrs. Rabska gave me a poster about the 1992 presidential election. I remember being home sick and she sent it home with my homework. We hung it in the hallway across from my bedroom. I also remember standing in my costume by the train tracks in Withee on Halloween that same year waiting for President Bush’s train to roll by. I had a Gore Lieberman yard sign on my locker freshman year. Some of my fondest memories as a kid include eating kielbasa and chicken in the basement of the Thorp American Legion Hall for the Clark County Democratic dinner, a tradition that has since moved locations to the Meadowview.

I use this trip down memory lane to say that I have been interested in politics for a long time, at least 30 years, and I have never been afraid that the transition between administrations wouldn’t go smoothly. I didn’t have that fear four years ago either. But then January 6 happened. The lesson, to me, of that fateful day four years ago is that we cannot take the peaceful transfer of power for granted in this country.

I referenced the Gore yard sign that I had on my locker in 2000. All evidence points to the fact that had the recount been allowed to continue in 2000, Al Gore would have won in Florida, and therefore won the presidency. Instead, a conservative Supreme Court intervened on behalf of the Republican candidate and declared George W. Bush president. Despite this, Al Gore, who had every reason to fight, conceded the race and allowed for the peaceful transition of power.

The example set by Vice President Gore, who also oversaw the certification of that election, stands in stark contrast to the images that have been burned into our collective consciousness of angry Trump supporters scaling the walls of the Capitol in an attempt to “hang [Vice President] Mike Pence,” which are their words, not mine. In the days, weeks, and years since January 6, 2021, Trump has continued to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election. So what are the chances that a guy who still hasn’t come to terms with the outcome of the last election will gracefully accept the outcome of this one if it doesn’t go his way? Throughout this campaign, he has sowed the seeds of distrust among his supporters, claiming that if he doesn’t win it will be because the election is “rigged.” In my experience people don’t sow seeds that they don’t plan to harvest. What should be of deep concern to us is what exactly that harvest looks like. Vice President Harris has struck a distinctly different tone with her rhetoric. In her closing arguments, which were staged in the exact same place that Trump had told his supporters to “fight like hell” in the hours before the Capitol riots, she called for a “different path,” instead of “more chaos” and “more division.”

I know I’m not alone in these concerns. In fact, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 4 in 10 registered voters were “extremely” or “very” concerned about violent attempts to overturn the results of this election. There is no doubt that Trump has been an eroding force on our democratic norms over the past decade. The question remains whether we will allow for that erosion to continue. It is simply un-American for politicians to try and hold power by lying, cheating, stealing, and provoking their supporters into acts of political violence. We must, if we want the republic to continue, turn instead to what Lincoln referred to as “the better angels of our nature.” In his first inaugural address, President Reagan called the peaceful transfer of power “nothing less than a miracle.” There is no doubt in my mind that both Reagan and Lincoln would be horrified at the anti-democratic rhetoric of the current standard bearer of their party.

I hope that my concerns are unfounded. That, regardless of who wins, the certification of the election and the inauguration comes and goes without incident and that we can move forward, firmer in our democratic convictions, our faith in our republic and the institutions essential to its survival. When a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government they had created at the Constitutional Convention, he famously replied, “A republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.” His implication was that our republic is not a given, it is something that must be maintained and cared for. The work to keep it now falls on us, what remains to be seen is whether we are up to the task or not.