This publication keeps records. Here is the record going into Tuesday, in the order it was built this month. The Justice Department sued a state to withhold a Senate certification before the votes were cast, and on Friday asked a federal judge to impound every ballot marked for one candidate. It demanded that California set aside 20,000 ballots, lost in front of a judge who wrote “never before in American history,” and sent grand jury subpoenas to the people who count Los Angeles’s votes, returnable the morning after the election. The president posted a million-dollar bounty for fraud tips, called for a sitting congresswoman’s prosecution, and told allied governments, through a newspaper, that the war paused for this vote resumes after it. The Speaker of the House promised a peaceful transfer of power in which nothing transfers. Every item in that paragraph is filed, posted or on tape.
What Tuesday decides is who holds subpoena power in January. A House majority can compel testimony on the Starshield cap, the Social Security files, the USAID deaths and the contracts; a Senate majority can refuse confirmations and money. Neither can convict, neither can legislate over a veto, and neither will end a war by resolution. What they can do is make the record public under oath, which is the thing every piece this month has been missing and the thing the people in it have spent $443 million and a lawsuit to prevent. That is the stake. It is smaller than the slogans and larger than any election I can remember, because it is the last scheduled check before 2028 and the people being checked have told you, in writing, what they will do if it fails.
So vote. If you’ve already voted, you are not done. The margin in Kansas is nine points in a poll and the margin in Iowa is under one. The Alaska Senate race may be decided by whether voters ranked a second choice. Those are not races won by people who agree with you and stay home. Find one person who means to vote and hasn’t, and go with them. Drive, walk, wait in line together. The single most effective thing anyone reading this can do between now and Tuesday night is turn one intention into one ballot, and the second most effective thing is to do it twice.
Then be a witness. Polling places this year will have federal monitors, local observers and, in some states, people who have been told there is money in finding fraud. Most of them will behave. If you see a voter turned away without being offered a provisional ballot, a line that isn’t moving while a machine sits idle, anyone demanding identification the state doesn’t require, anyone photographing or questioning voters, or anyone in a uniform or a vest who won’t say who sent them, do two things before you leave. Tell the chief judge at the polling place, who is required to log it. Then call the Election Protection hotline at 866-687-8683, which is 866-OUR-VOTE, staffed by lawyers; Spanish speakers can call 888-839-8682, and Arabic speakers 844-925-5287. Write down the time, the location and what you saw. A complaint made at 2 p.m. can be fixed at 2:15. The same complaint made on Wednesday is a story.
Do not argue with anyone at the polls, do not film voters, and do not leave the line. The line is the point. Every person who stays in it is a vote that exists, and every vote that exists is one the people in the record above have to explain away rather than prevent.
Tuesday. Bring someone.
And, for the love of EVERYTHING, don’t insult or demean those who choose not to vote.
Who’s fault is it that neither party gave them candidates they thought were worth voting for?
Who’s fault is it that both sides throw enough bullshit, mud, and other unpleasant things into the air, causing people to decide it’s safer to just stay out of the line of fire?
You can blather on all you want about the ‘lesser of two evils.’ I DO agree with that. I’ve held my nose on more than one occasion in the last 20 years.
Of COURSE I’m going to vote. I haven’t missed a single election since 1971, and I’m sure as hell not going to stop now. And if ICE shows up at the polling locations, I’ll fully exercise my First Amendment rights (from outside the polling location, of course).
Well said