Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist paper 68 (The Mode of Electing the President), says, when explaining the use of presidential electors, “It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.” The peaceful transition of power was a very unusual concept in those days: historically, almost all political leaders were not even elected, and ceased being leaders only because of natural death, homicide, or defeat in battle.

The overwhelming majority of presidential elections have led to peaceful and uncontroversial transition of power. The few really contentious elections, such as those of 1800 and 1876, where  the eventual winner was not determined until much later than usual, still saw an orderly transition to the new administration. The 2020 election, as we all know, was exceptional – not only was there substantial violence in an attempt to interfere  with certification of the election, but extremely unusual behavior from the outgoing president, including a concerted legal campaign to contest election results, and repeated unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

Despite the mostly peaceful treatment by rivals, being President of the United States of America is a dangerous occupation. The list of assassination plots (4 of which have been successful and 2 of which caused injuries to the president) is long. Among other incidents, Truman was certainly in serious danger in 1950. Several plots (for example against Hoover and F.D. Roosevelt) occurred after the election but before the president had been sworn in, during the presidential transition period.  The list of would-be assassins is varied: in addition to those who were simply mentally ill, alleged motivations include white supremacy, anarchism, Puerto Rican independence, and Zionism. A poignant note: Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of Abraham, was present (being Secretary of War) when James Garfield was killed in 1881. Note that in addition to the 4 deaths by homicide, 4 presidents have died of natural causes during the presidency, including Zachary Taylor who apparently contracted a gastrointestinal infection from food or water. This gives a death rate of 15-20% for presidents in office.

Members of Congress have a much better survival rate, but even so there is (compared to other long-established democracies) a remarkable number of them who have been killed and wounded. These include the infamous assault in 1856 on Charles Sumner by another member of Congress who objected to Sumner’s anti-slavery speech. Other politicians are also not exempt, as this list shows. Of course, these are extremes, and there are many more threats to government officials made than are carried out.

There has been a large increase in the last decade in threats, doxing, swatting, and other practices intend to intimidate public officials, along with inflammatory language and stochastic terrorism. As I write, opinion polls (e.g. see stories here , here, here) show that a large fraction of potential voters are concerned about the prospect of political violence.

The causes of this uptick in political violence appear to center around (largely erroneous) beliefs that a political party or its nominees (and in recent years we are talking almost exclusively about the Republicans) are being unjustly or corruptly denied their political rights, together with tribal feelings of being out-competed or supplanted by other tribes. The US has seen this before in the 19th century (see this article for a detailed analysis of the current situation in historical context). The four main factors, according to the above article, that promote election violence are 1) a highly competitive election that could shift the balance of power; 2) partisan division based on identity; 3) electoral rules that enable winning by exploiting identity cleavages; and 4) weak institutional constraints on violence. Of course, many countries worldwide have seen political violence in the last few decades, but among advanced industrialized democracies, it has been relatively rare and often perpetrated by extremist outsiders. The disquieting new feature is that major parties such as the Republican Party are implicitly or explicitly accepting political violence and normalizing it, so that it is no longer a tactic used by frustrated and mentally disturbed lone wolves.

It seems clear to me that the state and public must fight back against this trend. We have seen how allowing political violence has played out in fairly recent history, for example in Europe in the 1930s. Not only should law enforcement be more stringent when dealing with individuals and small conspiracies, political actors should be demanding higher standards of politicians and their parties. I find it hard to understand how a candidate who refuses to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, for example (noting that they have been widely regarded as the most secure in history), can be credible to any voter. But if that candidate refuses to a priori rule out political violence should they fail to win, in my view they should be disqualified from candidacy Amendment 14, Section 3 of the US Constitution bars those who engaged in insurrection from various public offices: what constitutes insurrection and who decides has been recently discussed in the Supreme Court, with an unsatisfying answer obtained for now (the states can’t decide). But engaging in insurrection is a very serious act – surely it must be possible to be disqualified for threatening to engage in insurrection, or to cancel elections once elected, etc. I am not a legal scholar, and the First Amendment presumably allows more latitude in the US than many other countries, but I would really like to know whether disqualification of candidates or parties on the basis of their clear threat to the democratic system is possible.