Republished with permission as part of the Democracy Now initiative
WOODRUFF, Wis. – For two and a half hours on a rainy Thursday evening, Kathy Bernier did what she’s spent the past year doing: trying to restore faith in America’s electoral systems – and, along with it, faith in democracy.
On this night, she stood before about 30 local officials, poll workers and residents of this northern Wisconsin community, a place that has consistently voted Republican, and talked about election procedures and how to distinguish fact from fiction.
“Our mission is to bring understanding to the electoral process,” she told the audience. “The crisis in trust is bigger than just one party.”
Kathy Bernier leads a civic education event hosted by Keep Our Republic at the town hall in Woodruff, Wis., on Thursday, June 6, 2024. Bernier, a Republican fighting to restore trust in elections, served as the group’s state director until July. (Photo by Donovan Johnson/News21)
Since July 2023, this die-hard Republican has traveled some 2,000 miles across the state. She’s been shouted at, labeled a RINO – a derisive acronym that stands for “Republican in Name Only” – and forced to rebuff conspiracy theories about Serbians hacking American voting machines.
It was all part of her work as the Wisconsin state director of Keep Our Republic, one of several initiatives nationwide working to rebuild public trust in elections. Bernier led the group for over a year, before resigning in July for personal reasons.
Many such efforts sprang up after lies about the 2020 election culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol. The initiatives range from cross-partisan groups working in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin to off-the-record meetings of conservatives in Republican strongholds such as Utah, Indiana and Texas.
“The United States is going down a slippery slope,” says Bernier, who chaired Wisconsin’s Senate elections committee when the state took center stage in then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election with fake electors, lawsuits and a partisan probe.
“I just am stunned there’s people that will go around and just spew this disinformation and misinformation,” she says. “Whether they realize how much they’re harming our democratic republic, I don’t know. But it is harming it.”
With this year’s presidential election mere months away, many are calling it one of the most important in American history. But what value does an election have if only 63% of Americans are confident in its results?
A lack of faith in government itself is not new. Since 2009, public trust in the federal government has not exceeded 29%, according to the Pew Research Center. However, some observers warn that a newly heightened distrust in the electoral system is compromising a core pillar of American democracy.
“Building trust in our election system means ensuring that one of the bedrock institutions of our democracy is protected and safe for future generations to come,” says Matt Germer, co-lead of a trust-building initiative focused on uniting conservative public officials.
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