Stubborn Things

To the People of the United States:

1. The pain point today

Every four years, Congress meets in joint session to open the certificates the states have sent and count the electoral votes. For most of our history this has taken minutes. In 2017 it took forty-one. ¹

In this century, members of both parties have stood in that session to challenge a result their side had lost. In No. 1, Faction, and the Fire Not to Be Quenched, I gave the short form of this record as one of the places where Washington’s warning about the spirit of party came true. Here is the longer form, because this paper is about what the record is for.

In January 2001, House members rose to object to one state’s electoral votes. No senator had signed, and the presiding officer, the sitting Vice President, who had himself lost that election, ruled that an objection needed a senator’s written endorsement. ¹ In January 2005, a Representative and a Senator of the same party objected in writing to another state’s votes, citing reported irregularities. The Senate rejected the objection 1 to 74, the House 31 to 267. ² In January 2017, House members of that party tried again. No senator signed, and they were not recognized. ³

In January 2021, members of the other party objected to two states’ votes. The joint session was broken off when a crowd breached the Capitol. More than 140 police officers were assaulted. When Congress returned that night, the objections failed: 6 to 93 and 121 to 303 on the first state, 7 to 92 and 138 to 282 on the second. ² A week later the House impeached the President for incitement of insurrection, and after he left office the Senate’s 57 votes to convict fell ten short; I traced those votes in No. 8, The Remedy and the Weapon. ⁸ The claim behind them, that the election had been stolen, had already lost in court roughly sixty times, before judges appointed by Presidents and governors of both parties, and recounts in contested states had confirmed the counts. ⁴

In 2022 Congress repaired the counting law with votes from both parties. ² In January 2025 the count went through without a single objection, and the Vice President presiding, herself the losing candidate, announced the result. ⁵

So the machinery held. The trust did not. Pew reports that since the 1970s, trust in the federal government has run higher among whichever party holds the White House. ⁶ Elections now settle who governs without settling whether the loser’s voters believe it. An election that ends only for the winners has ended only halfway.

2. What they warned

The founders did not assume voters would trust the result. They designed for distrust.

Madison put the principle at the center: “The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government.” ✓ verified, Q01 Hamilton, defending the electoral system in The Federalist No. 68, said it was “desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice” ✓ verified, Q02, and that “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption.” ✓ verified, Q03 In No. 59 he defended Congress’s power to regulate federal elections with a rule worth memorizing: “EVERY GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO CONTAIN IN ITSELF THE MEANS OF ITS OWN PRESERVATION.” ✓ verified, Q04

The Constitution divided the work so that no single hand could hold the count. “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors” ✓ verified, Q05. The certificates travel sealed to the capital, and “the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted” ✓ verified, Q06. The verbs are plain. Open. Count. The joint session is a public reading of a record the states have already made.

Washington knew how a free people loses its grip on the record. “It is not difficult by concealment of some facts, and the exaggeration of others, (where there is an influence) to bias a well-meaning mind, at least for a time,” ✓ verified, Q07 he wrote in 1794; “truth will ultimately prevail where pains is taken to bring it to light.” ✓ verified, Q07 In his Farewell Address he warned that factions could become engines “by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People” ✓ verified, Q08, and he stated the bargain that makes elections work: “The very idea of the power and the right of the People to establish Government presupposes the duty of every Individual to obey the established Government.” ✓ verified, Q09

Jefferson gave that bargain its classic form after the bitterest election of the founding era, the contest of 1800, which the House of Representatives had to decide. In his First Inaugural he asked for “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority” ✓ verified, Q10 and called it “the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force” ✓ verified, Q11. In the same address he bound the winners as well: “though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable” ✓ verified, Q12.

And John Adams, defending British soldiers in 1770 in a town that hated them, put the discipline in one sentence, as his grandson’s edition of his Works records it: “Facts are stubborn things,” he told the jury, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ✓ verified, Q13

3. How it came true

Washington’s “concealment of some facts, and the exaggeration of others” ✓ verified, Q07 is the precise description of how both sides now handle the electoral record.

The objection as performance. The objections of 2001, 2005 and 2017 came from one party, and those of 2021 from the other. ¹²³ In 2001 and 2017 no senator signed, so the objections were never received. In 2005 and 2021 a member of each chamber signed, and both chambers debated and voted. None came close to succeeding. What set 2021 apart was its scale, and what surrounded it. As I said of this same record in No. 1, a written objection that fails 1 to 74 and a breach of the Capitol during the count are different acts, and an honest ledger reports each at its true size. Symmetry means one scale for every column, not equal weight in every column.

The claim that survived its forum. The claim that the 2020 election was stolen was tested where fraud claims belong: in court, under oath, with evidence. It lost there roughly sixty times. The administration’s own Justice Department said it had found no fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome, and state officials of the President’s own party certified the results under heavy pressure not to. ⁴ The claim survived anyway. In my forthcoming No-America I describe what that does to a republic: “a republic is defined less by the claims it accepts than by its ability to make claims die.” ✓ verified, S1

The record bent from the other side. The institution created to investigate the breach also bent the record. The Responsibility Threshold I published on Civic Realism records it as one of its two examples (below): on December 13, 2021, the House Select Committee displayed a member’s text message cut in half, and later acknowledged the error. ⁷ A committee with a true story to tell did not need to trim the evidence. It did anyway.

The repair, and the quiet proof. In 2022 Congress passed the Electoral Count Reform Act with members of both parties. An objection now requires one-fifth of each chamber; the presiding officer’s role is “solely ministerial” brief; the governor’s certificate names the electors. ² In 2025 the count of the next election ran without objection, under a Vice President presiding over her own defeat, as one had in 2001 and another had in 2021. ¹⁵ The founders’ design works when the people in it let it. In 2020, the Supreme Court had said the same of electors bound to the popular vote: their ballots answer to “the trust of a Nation that here, We the People rule.” ✓ verified, Q14

4. The choke point

The record exists, but citizens cannot see it. American elections are run by thousands of counties under fifty sets of laws. The ballots, logs, audits and recounts exist. Almost no voter has ever looked at them, and few places publish them in a form a citizen can check. When trust must be taken on faith, faith follows the jersey.

A claim costs nothing, and a correction costs a career. An officeholder who repeats a false claim helpful to his side loses nothing with his voters. One who corrects it may lose his primary. Every incentive runs toward the claim. This is why the Responsibility Threshold exists.

Losing stopped being binding. The forum still rules. The coalition no longer listens. A verdict that does not end the claim teaches both sides that the forum is optional.

Each side keeps only half the ledger. One side remembers 2021 and forgets 2001, 2005 and 2017. The other remembers the trimmed exhibit and forgets the sixty lost cases. Each half is true. Kept alone, each half becomes the exaggeration Washington warned about.

5. The fix and the prevention

The standard first. I published a conduct rule on Civic Realism that fits this problem exactly. I quote it here as published (civicrealism.com/doctrine#responsibility-threshold):

Theatrical politics is the practice of twisting facts, trimming quotes, altering documents or editing video to paint a picture the evidence does not support. It has no place in real self-government, whichever side performs it. [T1]

The Responsibility Threshold. Anyone who holds or seeks authority carries an affirmative duty to dispel lies, including lies that help their own side, and to prefer the truth over the outcome they want. A claim is not a finding. Wanting something to be true is not evidence that it is. [T2]

The doctrine gives two documented examples, one touching each side of the 2021 story:

Trimming the record fails the threshold. On December 13, 2021, the House Select Committee on January 6 displayed a text message attributed to a member of Congress in a form that cut the sentence in half and dropped the rest of the message. The committee acknowledged the error. Presenting an altered exhibit to the public, for any cause, fails the threshold. [T3]

Repeating a refuted claim fails the threshold. The claim that Congress never certified the 2020 election is false. The joint session completed the count and certified the result in the early hours of January 7, 2021, and the Vice President announced it. Repeating a claim the public record plainly refutes fails the threshold. [T4]

Applied to elections, the threshold asks three things of anyone who holds or seeks office. Raise a doubt in the forum built for it, with evidence. Accept the forum’s answer when it comes, or bring new evidence to the same forum. And correct a false claim when you see it, first and loudest when it helps your own side. Adams’s sentence is the test: our wishes “cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ✓ verified, Q13

None of this asks for saints. In No. 8 I called the ten House members and seven senators who voted against their own party’s President in 2021 the exceptions that prove the design: members willing to judge their own side. The threshold asks every officeholder for that same willingness, and it asks it of the side that won as firmly as of the side that lost.

For states and Congress:

1. Publish the record before certification. Every jurisdiction should post its results, ballot counts reconciled against voter check-ins, chain-of-custody logs and audit results, in plain formats, before it certifies. Trade-off: cost, and the duty to protect ballot secrecy, which means publishing counts and images of ballots only where they cannot be traced to a voter.
2. Audit every election by sampling paper. Risk-limiting audits check a random sample of paper ballots against the machine count, so the result rests on paper anyone can inspect. Trade-off: time and money in a tight calendar, and the need for a paper ballot in every jurisdiction.
3. Make local certification ministerial. Congress did this for governors and the presiding officer in 2022. States should do the same for county boards: certify what the count and audit show, with disputes routed to courts on a fixed calendar. Trade-off: officials lose discretion to refuse a count they believe is wrong; the courts, not the certifier, become the place to say so.
4. Watchers from both parties, everywhere. Guarantee trained observers from each major party, and from independent candidates, at every stage, with clear rules. Trade-off: observers can disrupt; the rules must bind them too.
5. Pre-commitment. Ask every candidate, before the election, to pledge in writing to take any challenge to the forum built for it and to accept the final judgment. Trade-off: a pledge is not enforceable. Its value is the record it creates, which voters can hold against the signer.

For citizens:

1. Look at the record once. Find your county’s posted results, audit or canvass report. Watch a canvass or a recount in person. Trust you have checked is worth more than trust you were given.
2. Keep the whole ledger. Learn the objections of 2001, 2005, 2017 and 2021, and the trimmed exhibit of 2021. If you can recite only the other side’s half, you have found your own blind spot.
3. Hold your own side to the threshold. When someone on your team repeats a claim the record has refuted, say so, in public, before the other side does.
4. Ask candidates the question. Will you accept the result of the election once the courts and recounts are finished, whoever wins?

6. The strongest objection, and the answer

The objection. Elections are not perfect. Irregularities happen, officials make mistakes, and some fraud is real and prosecuted every cycle. Telling citizens to trust the record asks them to trust the very officials they suspect. And a rule that punishes repeating a refuted claim hands the power to decide what is refuted to whoever controls the institutions. Yesterday’s settled fact is sometimes tomorrow’s scandal.

The answer. The threshold does not ask anyone to trust officials. It asks the opposite: that claims be tested where testing is possible, and that the record be put where citizens can check it for themselves. It does not forbid raising doubts. The 2005 objection, made in the proper form, debated and voted down, passes the threshold, because its makers used the forum and accepted its answer. What fails is skipping the forum, or losing in it and repeating the claim as if nothing had happened.

Nor does the threshold appoint a referee of truth. Its examples are not contested judgments. One is an exhibit its own authors admitted was altered. The other is a claim that Congress did not do what the Congressional Record shows it did. Where the record is genuinely unsettled, the duty is honesty about that, too. And if new evidence appears, the forum stays open; Franklin, Madison and Morris changed their minds in 1787 when the argument earned it. What a free people cannot afford is a claim that no evidence can kill. Washington’s promise was conditional: truth prevails “where pains is taken to bring it to light.” ✓ verified, Q07 Taking those pains is now the citizen’s job.

7. Questions for the Candlelight

1. Can you name an objection to an electoral count by the party you usually support? How did you feel about it at the time?
2. Adams said our wishes “cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” ✓ verified, Q13 When did you last change your mind about something you wanted to be true?
3. The Responsibility Threshold says “A claim is not a finding.” [T2] What would it take to apply that rule to a claim your side likes?
4. Have you ever seen your county’s election records or watched a canvass? What would make you trust a result you did not like?
5. Jefferson asked for “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority” ✓ verified, Q10 but said the majority’s will “to be rightful, must be reasonable” ✓ verified, Q12. What does the losing side owe? What does the winning side owe?
6. One example in the doctrine touches each side of the 2021 story. Which one did you already know about? Why only that one?
7. What one thing could you do before the next election to make its result easier for your neighbors on the other side to trust?

Source notes

1. Congressional Research Service, RL32717, “Counting Electoral Votes: An Overview of Procedures at the Joint Session” (2020-12-08), on the 2001 joint session (the presiding officer’s rulings on objections to one state’s votes and the requirement of a senator’s written endorsement) and the length of the 2017 session; CRS R48309, “Joint Session of Congress for Counting Electoral Votes for President” (2024-12-10), section “Attempts to Object in 2001 and 2017.” Both fetched 2026-10-06. That the presiding officers of 2001 and 2021 were on the losing ticket is a matter of public record; the 2025 fact is in note 5.

2. Brief 14, “Counting the electoral votes, 2021, and January 6 (2005-2025)”: Senate Roll Call Votes 117th Congress, 1st Session, Nos. 1 and 2; Clerk of the House Roll Calls 10 and 11 (2021); CRS RL32717 and R48309 (2005 objection votes); Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, P.L. 117-328, Division P; U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., “48 Months Since the Jan. 6 Attack on U.S. Capitol” (archived copy of 2025-01-14).

3. CRS R48309, “Attempts to Object in 2001 and 2017”: House members sought recognition; “When the Representative responded that no Senator had signed the objection, the presiding officer did not recognize the Member for debate.” Brief 14.

4. U.S. House of Representatives, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Final Report, H. Rept. 117-663 (2022-12-22), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6-REPORT.pdf : 62 lawsuits filed between November 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021, of which one succeeded, affecting relatively few votes and not the outcome; the cases were heard by judges appointed by executives of both parties; hand recounts and audits confirmed the counts; the Attorney General told the Associated Press on 2020-12-01 that the Department had not seen fraud on a scale that could have changed the outcome; and Republican state officials were pressed to overturn certified results. The same record is set out in my forthcoming No-America, Ch. V.

5. Congressional Record, vol. 171, January 6, 2025, pp. H45-H46, “Counting Electoral Votes: Joint Session of the House and Senate,” https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2025-01-06/html/CREC-2025-01-06-pt1-PgH45-10.htm : the Vice President presided, no objection was made to any state’s votes, and she announced 312 electoral votes for Donald J. Trump and 226 for Kamala D. Harris.

6. Pew Research Center, “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2025” (2025-12-04). Via brief 22.

7. Civic Realism, “Theatrical Politics and the Responsibility Threshold,” civicrealism.com/doctrine#responsibility-threshold, citing FactCheck.org (January 2022) for the altered exhibit and NPR (2021-01-07) for the certification.

8. Brief 13, “Impeachments (2019-2021)”: Clerk of the House Roll Call 17 (2021-01-13), article for incitement of insurrection, 232 to 197; U.S. Senate roll call of 2021-02-13, 57 to 43. The same votes are set out in No. 8 of this series.

✓ verified, S1 Shawn Cosner, No-America (forthcoming; Reading Edition v1.2 manuscript, 2026), Ch. V.

Cross-references to earlier papers in this series: No. 1, Faction, and the Fire Not to Be Quenched (the counting-the-votes record of 2005, 2017 and 2021, and the rule of one scale for every column); No. 8, The Remedy and the Weapon (the 2021 impeachment votes, and members who judge their own side).

[T1-T4] Shawn Cosner, “Theatrical Politics and the Responsibility Threshold,” Civic Realism doctrine page, quoted exactly as published in src/pages/doctrine.astro (#responsibility-threshold); the bold labels in T3 and T4 are the published card titles.

Founding-era, constitutional and judicial quotations are verified word for word against the Civic Realism founders corpus (passage ids below), in the spelling of the edition in the corpus, including Washington’s “pains is taken.”

Quotation verification

How this was checked: on 2026-10-06, after the revision pass, the full body of this paper (Parts 1-7) was run through the Founders engine quote check (engine/quotecheck.py, check()) on the Spark, CPU only, with each Q mark bound to the corpus passage listed above, S1 bound to the full text of the No-America v1.2 manuscript, T1 to T4 bound to the text of src/pages/doctrine.astro (tags stripped), and brief 14 as the brief text. Result: 25 of 25 quotation instances passed, 0 failed, including repeats in Parts 3, 5, 6 and 7 and the short uncited “Facts are stubborn things” (matched in Q13). In this pass the first half of Q07 (“It is not difficult by concealment…”) was given its own ✓ verified, Q07 mark, which it had lacked. T1 to T4, which are set as block quotations, were checked against doctrine.astro the same way: 7 of 7 passed, with each card title (set here as a bold run-in label with a period added) checked separately from the card text. “solely ministerial” was checked against brief 14. Q13 is Adams’s argument as quoted in the biographer’s text of his Works (C. F. Adams, his grandson), which the corpus marks as editorial; a primary letter of 1777 in the same corpus has Adams’s own “facts are stubborn things in opposition to speculation.” Q14’s passage id carries the concurrence label because the corpus chunk begins with the last lines of the Court’s opinion; the words are the closing sentence of the opinion for the Court.