Day 57: 3,000 Little Elections

The November election is actually some three-thousand little elections. That’s roughly how many counties the United States has. Elections are organized and run at the county level, under the supervision of state and local election officials, using procedures that rival Democrats and Republicans have worked out over hundreds of years.

It’s the very decentralized yet sophisticated character of American voting that’s got the unpopular incumbent president, Donald Trump, running scared. Last time around, spoilers and a shrewd assessment of the electoral map propelled Trump to a legitimate victory over the more popular but complacent Hillary Clinton. Now, having alienated Americans with his crassness and criminality, Trump wants desperately to discourage and cow all of us individual voters, whose sentiments are destined to flow through our ballots and aggregate into those carefully counted county-level returns.

The county totals determine which candidate will be awarded the electoral votes of the state. Electoral votes are proportionate to a state’s population, but only active voters determine which candidate walks off with them.

You must be registered to vote if you want to make Biden president in 2020! Take the first step by visiting CanIVote.org. This is a non-partisan, bilingual website sponsored by the National Association of Secretaries of State (i.e., the pertinent officials in all fifty states). No matter where you live, this website can direct you toward state-specific voting information that you need. Use it to check whether you are registered, to find your polling place, or obtain the forms needed for early / absentee voting. One can even use it to sign up to become an election worker. It’s super-convenient.

As a resident of Chicago, I’ll be voting in Cook County, Illinois. Clicking through the CanIVote website takes me right to the Illinois State Board of Elections page, where I can find all the deadlines for registration and early voting, review my options for voting in-person, and read the directions for voting by mail. Voting is more complicated than usual this year because of the pandemic, so it’s essential to learn everything one can about the location specific parameters, before this momentous election season begins.

Image: “Map of the USA with county outlines”
adapted by Wapcaplet from a US Census Bureau map,
from this source.

Day 59: Formulating a Personal Pro-Biden Campaign

Whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump wins will depend on which candidate’s voters are more self-motivated and organized.

The COVID epidemic has disrupted normal society. It has displaced millions of people who have moved or altered their living arrangements to be safe, to care for loved ones, or because they’re suddenly out of work or their workplaces are closed. The risk of illness has estranged Americans from one another, making ritual gatherings, including all those associated with politics, rare.

COVID-related conditions have blunted every normal, in-person aspect of political campaigning. The conventions were virtual, rallies are extinct, and stumping, whether by the two candidates or state-level surrogates, must be so highly orchestrated as to sap its momentum and energy. The face-to-face aspect of American politics has been declining for decades in favor of electioneering that is more impersonal, media-driven, and premised on masses of sociological data. COVID has pushed those trends to almost pointless extremes.

At the same time, many of us crave a politics that is more immediate, local, and personal. Only by restoring honest personal discourse will Americans forge a new political consensus, and will a new generation of leaders be empowered to govern in a more accountable, forward-looking, and effectual way.

The temporary lull in national “retail” politics invites each of us ordinary voters to fashion personally appropriate ways to further the Biden cause.

All over the US, small grass-roots efforts are coalescing to get out the vote for BIDEN, to help people vote successfully during the pandemic, and to persuade inactive, new, or disaffected voters to “86 45” and make Joe Biden POTUS 46. One of my family members, for example, is active in the newly formed We of Action Virginia. Many other such local volunteer groups are loosely organized under Indivisible. Check out this map on the Indivisible website to find a local pro-Biden group near you.

I hope you will join me in committing to elect Biden on November 3. Please check back for American Inquiry‘s election count-down posts devoted to these themes.

  • Making a personal plan to vote, whether in person or by mail.
  • Voting in a timely fashion.
  • Lending your talents and influence to the campaign.
  • Deploying swag.
  • Considering who voted for Trump, and why they might switch.
  • “Each one, reach one:” personal GOTV efforts are the surest kind.
  • Aspiring to turn a pink county blue.

American Inquiry will disseminate information and materials in support of Biden. More soon.

Image: from this source.

Day 60: Game On

With sixty days to go before the presidential election, the extraordinary power of ordinary Americans to cancel Donald Trump is at last beginning to dominate public life. Will you and I succeed in ending the presidential double-dealing, callousness, vulgarity, and ineffectuality that we’ve had to put up with for the last four years? Game on.

The COVID epidemic and Trump’s full-throttle drive to assail the legitimacy of the election make it all the more essential that Joe Biden score an big, incontrovertible win on November 3rd. Instinct tells us what the polls barely reveal: Trump is a loser, his appeal passé. Tens of thousands of Americans are abandoning him, including many prominent people from within his own Republican party.

His outrage, his desperate rhetoric, his increasingly erratic attempts to smear the election process: Trump is behaving this way precisely because he knows he’s going down in flames.

But only we, the people, can make it official. We’ve got to vote and make sure that polling places are open and adequately staffed on Election Day. We’ve got to drive Democratic majorities to the polls. We’ve got to demonstrate enthusiastic support for Biden–put out our yard signs, dole out the swag. We’ve got to help turn out the vote for him, under circumstances that make turning out much more complicated. And we have to encourage independents and persuadable Republicans to turn out for Biden this time.

If everyone who wants Biden in the White House does something to assist him, he will emerge as the victor on Election Day.

Image:
“Counting the Vote, on November 7th, at Elephant Johnnie’s” (1876),
from this source.