On Tuesday, it was Election Day and most of us had high hopes to receive an answer by Wednesday or Thursday of who will lead our country for the next 4 years. But the presidential race appeared to have slowed to a crawl. We are still counting votes and waiting...This year's voting has been drastically impacting by the Coronavirus pandemic and led to a tremendous amount of early voting participants as well as more than anticipated mail-in votes.
The waiting part is not the problem as it was anticipated but the proclaiming of having won the election on the first night, even though it was not at all decided yet and bad mouthing the opponent and the States of how they count their mail-in ballots and thereby causing friction and possible riots, is neither acceptable nor understandable. And while the country waits for ballot tallies in a handful of crucial battleground States, the Trump campaign has pursued lawsuits in MI and PA and a recount has began in GA. Even before Election Day, Trump has pushed allegations of voter fraud without any tangible evidence and raised questions about the validity of the mail-in voting process. The issue with that is consistency and that people may loose their trust in our governmental system. As soon as Trump leads in one State, supposedly no fraud occurred but when he is losing then the vote counting is being considered fraudulent. Because of the lawsuits and recounting, this election could drag on for weeks until a clear winner is named. As Edward B. Foley, an Ohio State University law professor said: " This election won't be resolved until a losing candidate concedes defeat and congratulates his opponent. And if the candidates don't give us finality that way, then the legal process has to give it to us." And Trump has already stated prior to Election Day that he is not conceding defeat easily and will fight all the way. A truly sad outlook for our democracy.
Despite a year in chaos and no discernable leadership during a worldwide pandemic, the constant lying, the ignoring of facts (i.e: climate change) and most of all, the creation of hate and unrest among Americans by supporting Antifa groups and radicals, I'm disheartened and saddened to see that the presidential race is that close and that still so many people voted for Trump. Have we not learned anything in the past 4 years??? What are we teaching our future generations if we let an egomaniac and narcissistic person run our country? What happened to the duty of a president to support and protect all Americans and not just the ones who voted for him?
Joe Biden gave a brief speech on Tuesday on if he wins, he will not be a democratic president but a president for all Americans. This is exactly what we need to hear and what our country needs.
Unfortunately, the way this voting system is set up here in the US, it does not reflect all the popular votes but depends on certain States and their electoral votes. In my opinion, it is a very outdated system and should be changed so that literally every vote counts (peaceful dancing protests and marches across the country are rallying for "Every Vote Counts"). The demographics of our country are changing and with that the party alignments are shifting and the voting system should reflect this change. If every vote would count, we would have had elected Gore in 2000, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
The race is close but I think hope and humanity is prevailing and Biden will be declared as winner soon. At this point, the entire world is on pins and needles and awaiting the outcome. My hope is that after the election, the country will calm down and we all can live peacefully among each other, despite who we voted for. What America needs right now is unity, love and respect for each other and a clear path of how we can bring this country back out of this pandemic and make it better than it was.
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