I like to vote in person. It’s an important ritual in my life.
This year I am voting in an election where some millions of my fellow citizens are voting to put an end to voting, at least to voting in elections that they might potentially lose. One of the candidates for governor in my state openly disbelieves that it is even possible for the other party to win statewide or national elections in this state, and that he’ll do his best to override any election where that is the seeming result.
Whatever happens as the votes are counted across this country, if the Democratic Party manages to somehow survive yet another dance at the edge of a precipice of authoritarian state capture, I hope they can finally learn the art of articulating a politics they stand for and promise to pursue on behalf of their coalition—and indeed the nation and all its states and towns and neighborhoods—that is more than just avoiding a tumble into authoritarianism. That is more than just an outcry against the other party’s latest outrage against rights, fairness or truth.
That is not what the campaign consultants tell you about how you win an election with advertisements. The campaign consultants are made for times that are now long behind us. Whether we are tomorrow waking up in a country where people who are against democracy have won some democratic elections or a country where a thin line was held against that prospect, we need a new politics and new campaigns, because you only get so many chances when you stubbornly try to reinstate a long-past politics in a fundamentally different kind of world.
I hope I get to take more pictures like this one, to have more days like this one where I’m confident that my vote counted and that democracy will continue.
My big mistake this year was voting by mail. I sat with the instructions and tried to follow them to the letter. I think I did. However, I live in Lancaster County, where they refuse to notify people who have somehow transgressed the rules. If we have another election, I’m back to in-person voting.
Amen.