The first rule of electoral politics is, “Voters are never wrong.” Successful politicians learn early in their careers that when the voters are wrong, politicians need to carefully examine rule No. 1.

This is nothing new for politics, nor does it apply to just one political party. There’s a more important rule, though. That’s the first rule of humanity: “We’re human, therefore flawed.”

We all make mistakes. Most of our mistakes are small, but sometimes we do something that’s really boneheaded. If one of us ever thinks we’re incapable of making a mistake, we really, seriously, need to think about the first rule of humanity.

Right now, we’ve got a president who can’t seem to do that. Does that mean America’s democracy is at an end? Hardly. In fact, I’m optimistic about the future of democracy and think you should be, too. Here’s why.

The election of 1876 divided our country at least as much as last November’s has done. In 1876, arguments arose over vote totals reported from three states: Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina. What had been the party of President Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans, were the lefty liberals in 1876. They held power in many northern states.

The conservative, right wing, of politics was the Democratic party at the time. They controlled most southern states. Both parties claimed to have won the three contested states. Across the deep South, historians record, conservatives in 1876 used white-supremacist paramilitary groups who brutally beat or threatened African American men to keep them from voting. Thousands with the legal right to vote were intimidated or physically attacked to prevent them from going to the polls.

Liberal election boards fought back. They threw out thousands of legally cast conservative votes.

Because the voting in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina was neither free, nor fair, there was no way to know who had really won. The disputed results were presented to Congress.

The election of 1876 was settled by a compromise. The liberal candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, won the White House. The conservatives won a promise that liberals in Congress would not interfere in future elections in any of the former Confederate states.

That terrible agreement effectively deprived all former slaves in the South of their right to vote. It would be 88 years before the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 even began to restore that right.

The decades have since reversed much locally entrenched resistance to African American voting. However, a 2013 Supreme Court decision gutting the VRA has set minority voting back again. The Texas legislature waited one hour after the court decision was announced before passing its first new voting restriction.

It took a terrible compromise to settle who would be president in 1876. Compare that with the 2020 election. In court case after court case, judges, many of them conservative Republicans appointed by President Donald Trump himself, rejected claims of massive voter fraud made without evidence. The election was legal, free and fair.

Election officials, some Republicans, others Democrats, the former mostly unhappy that a Democrat had won but still honest about the vote totals, reported the results. The Electoral College met and voted for the Democrat. Then Congress met and confirmed the Electoral College vote.

A terrible invasion of the Capitol, of course, made the effort more difficult for Congress. If anything, though, Trump’s riot hardened the resolve of most senators and representatives to do their constitutional duty and acknowledge the will of the voters.

Some senators and some representatives, admittedly, voted for the loser. They argued without any evidence, except Trump’s claims without evidence, that votes reported from some states were wrong.

The first rule of politics was hard at work. Republicans elected by people who had voted for Trump couldn’t bring themselves to tell those voters they might have made a poor choice. One can only hope time and thoughtful consideration may convince them that following the first rule of politics proved how the first rule of humanity applies as much to them as to the rest of us.

Meanwhile we can be happy that America’s democracy worked. That should give us real optimism for our democracy and its future.

Dave Finkelnburg is a long-time Idahoan, a former newspaper journalist, and is currently semi-retired from an engineering career.