As Mainers start to cast their ballot, this year’s election will matter a lot for the health of our democratic republic. Americans have the ability to pick representatives who will make a huge slew of decisions affecting our futures and also our ability to empower ourselves.

As the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, “governments are instituted” to secure the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And our Constitution says our system is designed to “pursue the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty.”

It’s a never-ending story defining what our democratic republic is and can be. Although who can participate and what the government does has shifted over the centuries, certain core principles hold.

One is that government can provide support so that everyone has the opportunity to pursue happiness, with citizens choosing among candidates who have differing approaches.

Consider K-12 education, which has roots in the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann. In 1848 Mann proclaimed that public education is “beyond all other devices of human origin … the great equalizer of the conditions [among people] — the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” While recognizing that public education doesn’t overcome all differences of wealth, Mann held it was critical to a healthy society and democracy.

While Democrat Kamala Harris says she will “strengthen public education and training as a pathway to the middle class,” including traditional academics and vocational options, Republican Donald Trump would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, stopping the funds now going to Maine schools for low-income and special education students. Harris would increase opportunity and Trump would decrease it.

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Second, fair treatment of businesses produces better economies.

As scholar of autocracies Timothy Synder points out, countries with chief executives who approach businesses with an eye to control them to serve themselves have poor economies. Snyder argues that strongmen are bad for business, for “democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law.”

What we’ve seen from Trump in this regard is troubling.

Toward the end of Trump’s presidency, he tried to make the civil service more political, making appointees accountable to him and decreasing expertise. This is now a key element of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and they’ve been gathering names of Trump loyalists to take previously nonpolitical jobs, regardless of expertise.

Recently we’ve seen Republicans who support Trump threaten a business with the loss of their consulting contracts because a single employee leaked messages from GOP vice-presidential candidate JD Vance criticizing Trump in 2020. As the Washington Post reported, “Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers.”

Political retribution could also be aimed at business owners and investors, whether big or small. Consider that a Springfield businessman and his family, including his 80-year-old mother, got death threats after he said the Haitian immigrants he hired are good workers. What might happen to him if federal regulations are applied based on political allegiances?

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Third, stoking intense distrust in government can cause citizens to not cooperate with or understand what they can gain, harming their personal situations. As Prof. Douglas Harris and I wrote in “At War With Government,” Trump went beyond normal questioning of what government does, to create problematic fear and divides.

We see this now in what one fact-checker calls “a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene,” which Republican governors and local officials from the affected states said was not true. Those lies have consequences. FEMA workers have gotten threats and, if people believe the falsehoods, it makes it harder for people to get help and recover from the natural disaster.

Finally, as Mainers go to the ballot box, they should think about which candidates have supported or undermined fundamental democratic mechanisms. After losing four years ago, Donald Trump tried to undermine the peaceful transfer of power both by knowingly lying about his loss, trying to have new votes “found” in Georgia, overseeing the creation of fraudulent electoral votes and encouraging supporters to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6 where they mounted a violent assault.

Needless to say, Harris has done none of that. This is what led staunch conservatives like Liz Cheney and former GOP chairs in Maine and elsewhere to endorse her.

From the start of the American experiment, our founders wanted protections for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to be secured by government, controlled by the people. Trump’s plans would undermine freedom and policies needed to pursue happiness while overly centralizing power in the presidency and wielding it for political purposes. Harris’s plans promote personal freedom and the development of an “opportunity economy,” both of which will help Americans pursue happiness, security, and stability in their lives, their families’ lives, and in the communities in which they live.

Our democracy is stronger when people have greater opportunity, when the government prioritizes expertise over political favoritism, when there’s adequate cooperation with and trust in those who serve them, and when candidates respect the outcome of elections. Now is a time of choosing.

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