Vote or Die: Your Pre-Election Guide
T-Minus 4 days until the American general election.
The US presidential election is just days away. It seems as if all of the pressure and dread that has built up over the year 2020 is coming to a head, but learning the results of this election is not going to magically dissolve the tensions that have been building between Americans in the last few months. In the months since the coronavirus pandemic began sweeping through the country, sales of firearms and ammunition have skyrocketed. The pandemic is also completely changing the way millions of Americans are voting this year. In an effort to avoid large crowds on election day (Tuesday, November 3… vote), many have chosen to mail or drop off their ballots, or cast their votes early in person. This has led to record numbers of early votes that have matched nearly half of the total votes cast in the 2016 election. If this moment feels kind of big to you, that’s because it is.
There’s an old saying that gets tossed around at election years: “If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” In 2016, Donald Trump became president partly because so many people decided not to vote. Low voter turnout, coupled with decades of political maneuvering by Republicans in order to draw up politically favorable districts has resulted in a government elected by a minority of Americans. This reality is not lost on the Republican party, and their strategy for this election has been to suppress the will of the people in as many ways as possible in order to maintain power. In many ways, this election is an echo of the Bush v. Gore election twenty years ago, and features many of the same players.
The 2000 election was such a close call that votes from one state, the state of Florida, made all the difference. In some districts, there were technical malfunctions that resulted in some ballots being marked unclearly. This led to an intense legal battle between the two candidates, and much infighting about how and when ballots could be recounted to determine the results. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided that a recount would not take place and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. It is worth noting that three of the people who worked on his legal team at the time have since been appointed to the Supreme Court (Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and the newly appointed Amy Coney Barrett). This election does not exist in a vacuum.
One of the things worrying people who are closely following this presidential race is that our necessary reliance on absentee ballots will make it difficult to determine the winning candidate on election night. Counties and states throughout the country operate their elections differently, and some have rules in place that don’t allow ballots to be counted until election day or until polls close. If voters have marked or returned their ballots incorrectly, there is a chance their votes will not be counted as well. Mr. Trump has spent a lot of time and money trying to invalidate absentee voting and sow seeds of doubt in the mind of the electorate in an effort to position himself to contest results that do not favor him as the winner. For that reason alone, it is imperative that the winning candidate wins by such a large margin that the results cannot be contested (Please vote).
If you were planning on mailing your ballot and haven’t done so yet, drop it off at an official ballot drop box instead (you should be able to find this information on your state or county board of elections website). If you’re planning on voting in person, do this as early as possible. If you’re physically able to vote in person, be prepared for long lines, and be sure to bring snacks and water.
2020 is not the year to wallow in despair about how little your one vote matters. If a clear winner cannot be decided in a timely manner, the Supreme Court may once again play an instrumental role in deciding this election. In the 2000 election, the result was impacted by just a few voters out of the millions of people who live in the United States.
Please, literally for the sake of our democracy, if you accomplish nothing else in the year 2020, VOTE.