Each week the editorial board reflects on a current issue in Our View. The position taken does not reflect the opinions of everyone on the Hilltop Views staff. This week’s editorial board is composed of Viewpoints Editors Victoria Cavazos and Michael Lockett .

Democracy is important.

Or at least the succession of history, politics and cultural foundations classes have hammered the thought into our heads. We have been taught that American democracy was — pardon the pun — one of the most revolutionary things to come out of the 18th century.

It’s worked out better than most thinkers of the time thought it could. And it’s given rise to a country, that, for all of its faults, has done some great things to make the world a better place.

But with a presidential nominee speaking out against the legitimacy of the 2016 general election and Twitter activists wishing to repeal the 19th amendment, we at Hilltop Views feel the need to open up the conversation of democracy.

We’re not trying to whitewash America’s panoply of sins, but the rise of democracy showed the world that there was a method of government beyond inherited monarchies, hard-fought dictatorships, or overt theocracies.

And here we are, in the 21st century, with people arguing that we should roll back things like the Nineteenth Amendment, which, after languishing in Congress for 41 years, was finally ratified in 1920, less than a century ago. The amendment reads in full:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Two sentences, no words more than four syllables, zero commas or uses of the word “except.” Regardless of gender, you shall have the right to vote. You shall have the franchise.

You will not be disqualified from steering the direction of the entire country because you happen to have been born in the roughly 51 percent of the population who has historically been denied a voice.

And there are Americans who would repeal that! Who would take that great leap back into the days when we denied the franchise to half the population simply because of who they were born as, which, one is compelled to mention, no one has any control over.

And these people would do this simply because polls indicate that full half of the population, whose rights they would impinge on, will largely decline to vote for their presidential candidate.

It’s a bit ironic that they’d impose the same draconian restrictions in America, simply to get their candidate elected to high office.

I have to admire that level of pettiness. It’s wanting to flip the monopoly board and scatter the pieces simply because you’re awful at playing the game. It’s so deeply and hilariously juvenile that it surpasses something the Onion might write and it verges on idiocy so toxic it has to be disposed of in triple-walled steel and concrete containers beneath a mountain in the Nevada desert.

For love of all that’s good in the world, we live in America.

This is the land of freedom and opportunity! Where anything is possible, and anyone can be president. But no, say these people, arguing for the infringement of rights, we don’t like the way the game is playing out for us and our presidential candidate – let’s tear up the rules and kick half of the other team out of the game.

And are all of them the problem? No. It’s a vocal minority with no chance of succeeding, not while the houses of Congress and the state governments exist to serve the people by creating the best government for the most people. Is excluding half that population right? Is it just? Does it have their best interests at heart?

It does not. So, is it democracy? It is not.

It’s not the only blow the democratic process is poised to take this election. The same candidate whose supporters would silence the voices of fully half the population has alleged repeatedly that the election is rigged; that the establishment and the media have fixed the election to secure the victory of the opposition candidate.

This is a dangerous accusation, possibly more than the ravings of the fringe concerning the Nineteenth Amendment. The presidency United States has never been secured forcibly. While 2000 saw the Florida votes recounted and retallied, and the election eventually decided by the Supreme Court, a coup has never decided the next leader of the United States.

Our laws may be occasionally misguided, shortsighted, or wrong, but in the end, it is the rule of law that decides how our country is run. For a candidate to allege that those laws no longer function, that the election has been decided ahead of time, especially without any evidence to that besides their own losses in the polls, is a dangerous accusation- the equivalent of screaming ‘fire’ in a movie theatre for a joke. It is negligent, shortsighted, and incredibly irresponsible.

Because we do need to be able to respond, swiftly and decisively, in the case of actual chicanery with the process of elections.

If democracy is no longer holds primacy in the land, if the will of people, be it right or wrong, no longer dictates how the country is run, than we are no longer the country those who fought and bled so long ago sought to create. This isn’t like religion, where you can pick and choose the bits you like, this is hard yes-or-no.

Democracy can’t just be a Christmas and Easter habit. You need to believe in it, to support it, and to strengthen it, rather than detracting from it. To suggest otherwise, to try to deny the rights of those who would vote, to falsely allege that the process is rigged, is just un-American.