Post Election Post 1: Voting Heroes

                                                Counting votes in Georgia

So it’s taking a little longer, mostly because of the gun-shy network decision desks, but okay, instead of discussing the outcome, let’s consider the process.  

The process should be celebrated--though not the entire process. The most obviously broken part of how America does elections is polling. I’m sure the polling geeks will point out how they didn’t actually mess up big time, not really. But really, they did.

 Polling organizations, and media organizations that sponsor and prominently report polls, constitute one industry feeding off the election process. Another is the marketing and advertising industry that spends the money the campaigns raise from contributors. Those contributors got pretty much nothing for their money this year. The millions of dollars that the Democrats spent did nothing, and may have been counterproductive. It was excessive, especially during a pandemic when that money could have been contributed to organizations supporting public health. 

 Will campaign pros look at all this honestly? Can they afford to? Without the information from polls, without the go-to option of buying TV ad time etc., how are all these folks going to stay in business?

 Those are the broken parts of the process. The parts that came out of this shining, that minted heroes, were the people in Pennsylvania and Georgia, in North Carolina, Florida and Texas and across the country who worked themselves into a frazzle to get out the vote, to walk voters through the minefields that politicians created to keep them from voting.

 Vote suppression is not new to Georgia, but it was relentless, and they overcame it. Those people are heroes. And it looks like they’ll have to try to do it again but even bigger in the January run-offs, for the D’s to get the Senate. 

 In Florida and Texas and elsewhere, vote and voter suppression  were fought against but were factors again, though in the post-election period of recrimination and analysis, this will probably be forgotten. Except by the people who live there, who will fight back against it again next time.

 And then there are the people who counted the votes, especially in the most contested states where they were under enormous pressure. The election officials by and large kept their nerve, and the poll workers kept their heads in working long and exacting hours to mollify a restless electorate while making sure that ever vote was accurately counted. 

 And the voters, celebrated here in earlier posts, who came out in record numbers, masked up in long lines, to partake of this sacred American process. There was little violence or disruption, and voters often thwarted suppression efforts, though those efforts succeeded enough to affect the elections. 

 I heard that word “sacred” spoken about this election, not only by Joe Biden but notably by others, including network reporters, in connection with Homegrown Hitler’s White House whine that he really won except for everybody who voted against him, by definition fraudulently. He violated this sacred process of elections, the television reporters said.

 From the nuns in Catholic school I learned about two systems of the sacred: the Church and American democracy. Both had clear principles, moral foundations, systems of authority, checks and balances. By the middle of high school my misgivings about the Church were becoming a little less than silently ascendant, but my faith in American democracy grew stronger. The reason was simple: there were lines of authority and rules for all, including the basic rule that everyone could debate and dissent, and in the end, a lot was decided by votes.

 

By college my faith in the Church slipped away entirely, and though my faith in American democracy was taken beyond the breaking point in the Vietnam 1960s, and I endured more heartbreaking and mind-wrenching election nights (Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush) than nights that confirmed my confidence (Clinton, Obama), I never completely lost my faith in the process of debate and my awe for the process of voting. Yes, it was sacred. And human. And a prime definition of American.

 I also enjoyed the act of voting, the rituals of it, the secret ballot, inking in my choices and only my choices, seeing the ballot join the stream, while old ladies at tables smiled at me.   

In my hometown of Greensburg where I voted (and worked the polls for candidates) among people I sort of knew, and in Pittsburgh, where I saw familiar politicians canvassing from the required distance, and where I could buy a paper cup of coffee and a sweet roll from the bake sale after I voted. Things were more antiseptic in California, but still.. I was ecstatic to vote for Barack Obama four times (including two primaries) in a huge veteran’s hall that has to be one of the older buildings in Arcata. In a few elections before that I liked the idea of voting in a nearby public school. When we moved, we could vote there just by walking to the end of our street.

 Things were different this year of course. We all voted by mail, which works fine, here. Except for certain new wrinkles in voter suppression, the voting process was the most normal part of this election and these last four political years. 

 There are probably a dozen reasons why American democracy is so broken right now. But the signs are everywhere. In just the past week a federal judge ordered the head of the US Postal Service to take extraordinary measures to deliver completed ballots in time. He not only failed to do so. He out and out refused to comply. And upwards of 150,000 ballots didn’t make it. Even a few years ago, and certainly in my youth, that casual defiance would be unimaginable.

 It’s not a direct analogue but it is something else that has seemingly become normal but which is unprecedented in my lifetime: not just that the President of the United States makes dangerous and scurrilous charges from the White House podium, but that the major American networks immediately cut away from the scene, and prominent television reporters expressed in their words and manner utter contempt for him. This is also what we’ve come to. What much of this year’s voting expressed turned out to be doleful. And yet, even now, when the voting process is so wounded and defiled, I can’t help still seeing its beauty.