Election Day has arrived after an arduous journey through the ruts of misinformation, stunts and outright lies, a fractured, singular reflection both of perseverance through adversity and the insistence on giving in to the political moment for partisan gain.
By now, the parsing of this election as a choice between keeping democratic traditions and a course for an authoritarian remake of our government, over a referendum on issues like immigration, economics, abortion, environmental regulation and education almost seems trite. Sure, it remains a duel between The Felon and The Prosecutor, but also a fight about the place of truth and accountability, as well as the validity of equality and freedom as fundamental to understanding what America is. There is a lot at stake in our homes, neighborhood, country and world — and it seems beyond reason that we have little valid idea to know how it is all going to come out.
That we are reporting record numbers of voters should be cheering news, yet the obvious and too-close splits in our electorate for choices that are as diametrically opposed as possible should delight no one. In both major parties, we have given up caring how to make ourselves better and to ensure a society that cares about others for a chance at winning.
After weeks and months worrying about whom voters would support, now the question was coming down to who turns out to stand in line to vote. Equally at stake in the balloting is the makeup and majority of each house in Congress and, as a side results, the makeup of lifetime judicial appointments to the Supreme Court that will have an impact on our lives far longer than the next four years
Today is a psychological marker as well, giving room for an unusual amount of relief that a bruising insult campaign has temporarily ended, and for introspection about what we are so troubled about considering our leadership. What comes next is a duty to consider any compromise in the worlds outlined by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris towards solving any of the un-met problems.
The Cheating Claims
Apart from all that, this Election Day may close the door on the campaign itself but open the next season on fighting about the counting and certification of votes. The count will take several days to resolve in some of the key contested states, including Pennsylvania, which cannot start counting mailed ballots until tomorrow.
Already, at least 284 lawsuits are contesting the validity of votes and mailed ballot forms, armies of poll watchers are lining up to challenge anything that strikes an observer as possibly odd, and, in the shadows, restive protagonists are plotting to gum up the counting works.
It is a process calling more for patience than protest. As Axios notes, sluggish vote counts will fuel distrust for the election and its counts. With misinformation and disinformation so prevalent, keeping track can be difficult.
Those challenges all are part of what Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University told The Hill is “a national Republican commitment to establishing the idea of election fraud” in the event of a Trump loss. Further, he said, the claims are not only on behalf of Trump, but also to allow legal challenges of “any other very close elections that might take place.”
For his own part, Trump was alleging widespread “cheating” in Pennsylvania even this week, and was describing voting machines as that “beautiful, often corrupt, machine.” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt conflated the long lines at polling stations in a contested Philadelphia suburb with “illegal voter suppression.” Over weeks and months, Trump has twisted small incidents into intended, widespread, cheating plots, reports CNN, in an effort to prime his supporters to falsely believe that if he loses, the election is not legitimate.
But similar complaints were airing in Senate races, including in Texas, where Ted Cruz accused Kamala Harris and his opponent Colin Allred, without evidence with importing foreign voters. Texas this year wiped a million voters from registration rolls, targeting voters with Hispanic-sounding names, based on a guess that some might be undocumented.
The claims about swaths of foreign voters are baseless, as well as already illegal. It’s also this year’s version to apply the illogic of having lost in 2020.
Discovery by county officials in Pennsylvania of hundreds of suspected fraudulent registration applications should have been hailed as successful intervention rather than reason to distrust the count, for example — and in any case did not involve votes. Yesterday, county officials found 34 of the ballot applications fraudulent, but more than half valid, and more investigation coming on others. Another complaint about 53 voters registering at the same address turned out to be the nuns living at a convent in Erie County. A judge upheld an Iowa campaign to challenge 2,000 migrants 12 years ago that they were non-citizens, though they can cast “provisional” ballots.
Expect more, much more about mail ballots, early voting, and certification of votes required by mid-December to assemble Electoral College slates who elect the next president. There are concerns that Trump is preparing to declare victory prematurely – just as he did early in the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020, before anyone had called the race.
But Trump and his allies have been laying groundwork to try to dispute the election should he lose. In Georgia, conservatives sought to allow county election officials to refuse to certify the election results, though the effort was blocked by a state judge. Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris suggested last week that North Carolina’s GOP-controlled state legislature could award the state’s electoral votes to Trump before votes are even counted, before being forced to withdraw.
A New York Times analysis of a million messages across 50 Telegram big channels found “a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome.”
Voting season has ended, but the opening bell is ringing on the count. Sometime later we may get to governing.
