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Need to know ~ Topics & Events
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America Votes
Austin, Texas, USA, November 7, 2020
Photo: Michael Minasi, KUT News
Why current?
2020-11-10
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, Americans went to the polls to vote for their president. Their choices: Donald J. Trump, the incumbent, and Joseph R. Biden, a former senator and the vice president under Barack Obama from 2008 to 2016. While millions of people had voted early, millions more showed up on November 3rd to cast their ballots.
The two people who ran for the presidency have a few things in common. They are both over 70 years old (Trump 74 , Biden 77). They are both white. They are both men. But that is where the similarities end. They have very different values and personalities. Their career paths have been different. Their backgrounds are different. Their politics are different.
Probably you have been hearing a lot of election talk buzzing around you. In some ways, the election has been pretty typical. In other ways, it’s been unprecedented. Let’s break it down.
The candidates
The usual
- Two candidates, one representing each of the two major political parties (Biden – Democratic, Trump – Republican), ran for the office of president of the United States.
The unusual
- The candidates are the oldest we ever had. In 2016, Trump was the oldest person to be elected president. He was 70. Biden will be even older at the time of his inauguration: 78.
- Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, is the first woman of color to run for the office of vice president. She is biracial and the child of immigrant parents; her mother was from India, her father from Jamaica.
The circumstances
The usual
- America holds a presidential election every four years. The last one, in 2016, was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The unusual
- The 2020 election took place during a pandemic, which has infected over 10 million people in the United States and killed almost 240,000. In addition, growing anxiety over climate change, continued fights over racial justice, and seemingly unbridgeable divides among voters on opposite sides of the political spectrum helped define this election.
- Trump’s presence in the political landscape has widened the divisions. His supporters are determined to do whatever it takes to keep him in office, whereas his opponents are equally determined to vote him out of office. Trump is a polarizing figure. Biden on the other hand, urges people to “see each other” again, not behind veils of Democrat blue or Republican red, but simply as Americans.
The election itself
The usual
- The election was held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year, that was November 3rd. Our last election four years ago was on November 8th.
- Some people voted early, either by mail or in person, and some people voted on Election Day.
- Americans, as well as millions around the world, watched as election results came in.
- Vote-counting continued, even after the polls closed. This did not mean (as Trump has falsely said) that voting was still continuing after Election Day. Just the counting. This is common. In the election of 2012, when Obama ran for re-election against Mitt Romney, Florida was not called until four days after the election, in favor of the president. In 2016, when Trump won the election, Michigan was not finished counting until a full two weeks had gone by, post election. There are many more examples of such delays, and at no time have the results come into question, simply because they took longer to count.
- News networks called projected winners state by state, even before all the votes were counted, when they had enough information to safely predict who would have the most votes.
The unusual
- Many have said that in 2020, we did not have just an Election Day, but an Election Season. People started showing up to vote weeks before November 3rd, casting their ballots either in person or by mail, in unprecedented numbers. Why? One big reason was the coronavirus pandemic. People didn’t like the idea of going to the polls on November 3rd and having to stand in line with lots of other people. Another reason was the nature of this election and the current state of the nation. Many people had been waiting to make their voices heard for a long time and were eager to cast their votes early.
- On November 3rd, it looked like Trump was winning some states. But then, the numbers started to shift in Biden’s favor. This is because many Trump supporters preferred voting on Election Day rather than voting early. For months before the election, Trump had been making baseless claims that there was widespread fraud among early ballots – particularly among mail-in ballots. Even though there was no evidence of this, his supporters believed him. They refrained from voting early and went to the polls on November 3rd. Supporters of Biden, on the other hand, largely did not believe Trump’s assertions of fraud. They voted early in the millions. But the early votes were not counted early. In fact, they were counted last in some states. Certain state regulations prohibited the count of early votes before Election Day. So, poll workers first counted Election Day votes (which favored Trump) and then started tallying all the millions of other ballots that had been cast early (the majority of which favored Biden). This is why you saw a shift from Trump to Biden in a few key states where early votes were counted last.
- Overall, this was a record-breaking election. According to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida, more than 160 million people voted in this election. That’s about 67% of eligible voters, which is the biggest proportion since 1900. Of those 160 million ballots cast, almost 100 million were early votes. This is one reason it has been taking so long to count all the votes!
- Trump and his supporters insisted that in the states were Trump was ahead, vote counting should stop. In states where it looked like counting more votes would help Trump, they called for continuing the count.
After the election
The usual
- Even though it took a few days and a lot of patience to finalize the results, on November 7th the path to victory for Joe Biden became clear, and he was declared president-elect. Kamala Harris became vice president-elect.
- As is typically done by presidents-elect and their running mates, Biden and Harris both addressed the nation on the night of the 7th.
- Leaders from around the world called to congratulate the president-elect. People poured out onto the streets, both at home and broad, in celebration of Biden’s victory. It isn’t uncommon for people in other countries to care deeply about American politics because the U.S. president has a great deal of influence, globally.
The unusual
- Normally, the person who loses the election, gives a so-called concession speech. In this speech, he addresses the American people directly and encourages everyone to stand behind the new president-elect. He accepts the results of the elections as fair. There is no rule that says that the defeated candidate must give a concession speech. But it has been a tradition that has never before been broken or even questioned. It is important for a number of reasons. First, it helps people to unite again after an often brutal campaign season, during which people of opposing parties argue and fight. Second, it gives the loser’s supporters the opportunity to take a deep breath, accept defeat, and move forward. Third, it sends a message to the world that American democracy works. And finally, it helps the new president-elect get started on his transition into the presidency – a complex process involving thousands of people.
- For the first time, the loser of our election has refused to concede. Donald Trump has said that he in fact won the election and that Biden stole the election from him. He claims, without evidence, that the election was rigged and that there was widespread fraud when it came to mail-in ballots (many of which were democratic votes). He has said that he would contest the results in the courts and not accept the results until he wins. His address was televised, but most major news networks cut in to stop the video from running, stating that the president was making too many false statements to go unchecked.
- Trump’s tweets regarding what he calls election fraud have been flagged by Twitter.
- The refusal to concede is dangerous for the country. Trump is encouraging people to question the legitimacy of what was a fair and indeed historic election, in which tens of millions of Americans exercised their right as citizens to vote. In so doing, he is also telling people to doubt the legitimacy of the next president. He is spurring unrest, spreading conspiracy theories and lies, and inflaming existing divisions.
- Most politicians, world leaders, and law experts say that Trump does not have a case. He lost. Biden won. Period. But some members of the Republican Party have come out in support of his false claims. More importantly, despite the fact that most Americans chose Biden, there are still millions who believe Trump.
Sources: Astor, Maggie, The New York Times, “Ballots have never been fully counted on Election Day,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/us/elections/absentee-ballot-counting.html, 11/4/2020; Lauter, David and Hook, Janet, Los Angeles Times, “Americans broke a 120-year-old turnout record – and are more divided than ever,” https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-04/2020-election-trump-biden-count-analysis, 11/4/2020; Kirby, Jen and Molla, Rani, Vox, “9 Questions about 2020’s record-breaking early vote, answered,” https://www.vox.com/21527600/early-vote-explained, 11/3/2020; United States Election Project, “2020 November General Election Turnout Rates,” http://www.electproject.org/2020g, 11/4/2020; Philips, Amber, The Washington Post, “Joe Biden’s victory speech, annotated, “https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/07/annotated-biden-victory-speech/, 11/8/2020; The Washington Post, “Read the transcript of Kamala Harris’s victory speech in Wilmington, Del.,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/07/kamala-harris-victory-speech-transcript/, 11/8/2020.