There is something fishy happening this election cycle. Depending on what side of the aisle you fall on, this could evoke fantastic and frightening images of wide-scale voting fraud or the looming threat of a coup. Rather than deal in maddening hypotheticals, we need to look at the very real attacks being made against our electoral process.
Following months of Trump attacking the U.S. Postal Service and the validity of mail-in ballots, the Supreme Court has recently ruled the state of Wisconsin does not have to accept ballots received after Election Day. Across the country, similar measures are being taken against the political franchise of thousands of Americans.
Due to the unique nature of this election, mail-in ballots are expected to play a much larger role in the overall vote count, likely delaying the results of the election. What may look like a close win for one candidate on election night could easily be swayed in the opposite direction if a significant portion of the voting block casts their ballot by mail.
This is further complicated by the peculiarities of our federalist system, which permits wildly varying voting laws and totaling methods by state and even by county.
In some states, including Tennessee, votes are counted upon receipt which, depending on the postage date, could arrive after the election. In four states, ballots can not be opened until Election Day, shortly before polls close. Due to the sheer volume of mail-in ballots, they could take hours or even days to accurately count.
Voters should prepare for the very real possibility that we will not see the full election results immediately. If results change, even by a significant margin, this is likely not an elaborate game of rigging by either political party.
The game is already rigged as it is, not by imagined boogeymen or shadowy conspirators, but by legal processes meant to depress the vote among working people.
The country’s commitment to voter suppression, be it through the bureaucratic trudge of voter registration, widespread gerrymandering of districts, lack of polling locations or the more overt tossing of ballots, is a stain on the democratic process.
Every vote deserves to be counted. A healthy democracy should not seek to limit the number of people participating in an election but instead allow and encourage all its people to vote. Election night need not be a spectacle; stay informed and avoid the media circus.
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