As the Senate’s vote for a Supreme Court nominee closed down, Maine’s Susan Collins spoke at length about a bitterly contested candidate. She invoked a classic decision rule from civil and criminal law: When in doubt, presume innocence until proven guilty.

This critical assumption about guilt or innocence is constitutionally embraced in many countries, but there are two potential “mistakes” to be made when a verdict lies in the balance i.e., falsely accusing someone who is innocent (the Republican complaint), or treating as innocent someone who is actually guilty (the Democratic complaint). Either error can have major costs but the “mistakes” one tolerates are politically revealing.

For Republicans, the cost of falsely accusing an innocent man (a so called “false positive” problem) was intolerable. These costs, they felt, included damage to the reputation of a very young conservative jurist, the alienation of a large evangelical Christian “base” who hoped to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and delays in cementing Republican control of the Supreme Court.

For Democrats, the“false negative” problem (incorrectly finding the candidate innocent when guilty) was far more costly: failure to recognize evidence of poor temperament, flawed moral character, and patterns of sex abuse and alcoholism (alleged by other accusers). This led them to believe the candidate would delegitimize the court and diminish historic support for women’s rights.

That the presumption of innocence rule ultimately prevailed is not surprising given the extraordinary constraints placed by Republicans on evidence gathering). But that “presumption of innocence” rule used as a shield by Republicans hardly reflected a pious commitment to the judicial principle Senator Collins asserted. In fact, the GOP has weaponized this sacred decision rule, consistently using it as a constitutional fig leaf. But to protect whom? Morally corrupt men or unqualified people. It has protected men like Cavanaugh, Ben Carson, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Scott Pruitt, other Trump cabinet members, and abhorrent international dictators like Kim Yon-un, Rodrigo Duerte, or the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

The president’s presumption-of-innocence hypocrisy involving Vladimir Putin’s anti-democratic election tampering would strain the credulity of a brick.

Let’s contrast this particular decision rule embrace to state level decisions involving the sacred rights of every citizen to vote. Then, the hypocrisy makes one gasp.

Republican governors have invariably embraced a “false negative” decision rule, pretending it’s far better that 100 (or 50,000) innocent citizens be treated as guilty of electoral fraud (and denied the right to vote), than to fail to identify a single perpetrator of electoral registration fraud. This is the presumption of guilt rule run amuck, especially when Democratic citizens are the “disenfranchisees.”

Empirically of course, the incidence of voter identification fraud is negligible. The Brennan Center for Justice has found that the incidence rates of impersonation fraud fall between .0003 percent and .0025 percent. It is more likely that an American will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another person at the polls.

But, in spite of crushing empirical evidence to the contrary, voter fraud is the great Republican boogeyman. They respond by presuming guilt first, in diametric opposition to the principle embraced with flawed or corrupt candidates.

False negatives are the red meat they live on in denying rights to those who are not members of the tribe. Accordingly, in state after state, Republican officials presume guilt, laboring hard to suppress the vote, purge the roles, and to pass extreme voter ID requirements that bar voters who have been qualified for generations, but may be poor or less well educated.

It is a yeoman effort in the politics of disenfranchisement, not electoral integrity or democracy. For those professing a love for our democracy, often displaying American flags on their lapels to prove it, it is a shameful, constitutional disgrace -- and nothing to be proud of.

Willard Van Horne Ph.D, a Swansea resident, is a retired education sociologist and former Director of Research for the New York State Education Department.