Well, congratulations to the
winner of the 2020 presidential race, congrats to—
Well, we don’t know just yet.
Sure, yesterday was Election Day, millions of people voted, and by the evening, the polling places were shuttered for good, and then the tabulations began.
The problem is that so many people decided to use and send in write-in mail ballots this pandemic year that due to various rulings, restrictions, and let’s be honest about it, downright stupidity, we might not know until next week who won this hotly contested election.
And that is just plain wrong.
The wonderful part about our election process is that Americans always knew the morning after the election who won the presidential contest, but we have sunk to new lows this year, and we might not know until literally next week—or even beyond that—who our next president is.
And yes, that is just plain wrong.
So how am I going to address this beyond what I have already said in this column about how wrong this is?
How do I write a non-political column the morning after the presidential election?
Simple.
I will try to make this as non-partisan as possible, even though one side or the other might not see it that way.
Here goes:
We need uniform voting laws, the same voting laws in each of the 50 states, so that this never, ever happens again.
We need mail-in ballots to be valid on a single date, not different dates by state, and we need all voting laws to be consistent whether we are talking about bigger states like New York and California or smaller states like Rhode Island and Delaware.
You can’t have such ballots be valid in one state if they are postmarked on Election Day, and in another state have them valid only if they come in by Election Day.
It makes for problems, as we have seen right here in this election, where the results are thus far so close that we might be sitting on pins and needles for at least a week waiting to find out who the actual winner is.
Therefore, we need to make the voting laws more uniform across our country--even down to the very basic opening and closing times for poll places--and hopefully, within the next four years, our legislators will see to it that they are, and that such nonsense never permeates a presidential election ever again.
And we also need to make Election Day a national holiday across this land, because we have to make it easier for people to vote—on Election Day, not a week before.
The way we have it now, it devalues the day, it takes the electricity out of the day, and the day is called “Election Day” for a reason.
Sure, we had the pandemic this year, so people could claim that they didn’t want to go to the polls when it would be so busy on the actual day, so they voted early or by mail.
But quite frankly, my entire 2020 Election Day experience took all of 10 minutes, and it was really even shorter because I was in tow with my family, so it really took about five minutes.
So they push to vote early or by mail was pretty much balderdash, as the lines to vote early were way longer than the lines to vote on Election Day.
Mail-in voting should only be reserved for the infirm or the elderly, but this year, just about anybody could mail in their ballots this way.
We can’t have that in 2024 or beyond. It just makes a mess of the day, and in a hotly contested race like this one, it just makes things that much worse.
Let’s get together on Election Day 2024 and do our voting the right way, without any hindrance or flies in the ointment.
So you see, I could do a Rant on the day after this election where I didn’t take sides.
The only side I want to be on is that of the American people, and this year’s presidential election will go down in history as the mess that it is becoming as we count the days, minutes, hours and seconds until we find out who the winner is.
It’s the real year 2525 right here in 2020—notice how I got the plug in for the number of Rants I have written over the past more than a decade—and even Zager and Evans would not be proud of the way the voting has been handled this year.
It has to be fixed--and NOT by the year 2525--and whatever the result, we should all learn from our mistakes and never repeat them—and we have four years to fix things so this type of situation never, ever happens again.
Let’s all vote for that.
Well, we don’t know just yet.
Sure, yesterday was Election Day, millions of people voted, and by the evening, the polling places were shuttered for good, and then the tabulations began.
The problem is that so many people decided to use and send in write-in mail ballots this pandemic year that due to various rulings, restrictions, and let’s be honest about it, downright stupidity, we might not know until next week who won this hotly contested election.
And that is just plain wrong.
The wonderful part about our election process is that Americans always knew the morning after the election who won the presidential contest, but we have sunk to new lows this year, and we might not know until literally next week—or even beyond that—who our next president is.
And yes, that is just plain wrong.
So how am I going to address this beyond what I have already said in this column about how wrong this is?
How do I write a non-political column the morning after the presidential election?
Simple.
I will try to make this as non-partisan as possible, even though one side or the other might not see it that way.
Here goes:
We need uniform voting laws, the same voting laws in each of the 50 states, so that this never, ever happens again.
We need mail-in ballots to be valid on a single date, not different dates by state, and we need all voting laws to be consistent whether we are talking about bigger states like New York and California or smaller states like Rhode Island and Delaware.
You can’t have such ballots be valid in one state if they are postmarked on Election Day, and in another state have them valid only if they come in by Election Day.
It makes for problems, as we have seen right here in this election, where the results are thus far so close that we might be sitting on pins and needles for at least a week waiting to find out who the actual winner is.
Therefore, we need to make the voting laws more uniform across our country--even down to the very basic opening and closing times for poll places--and hopefully, within the next four years, our legislators will see to it that they are, and that such nonsense never permeates a presidential election ever again.
And we also need to make Election Day a national holiday across this land, because we have to make it easier for people to vote—on Election Day, not a week before.
The way we have it now, it devalues the day, it takes the electricity out of the day, and the day is called “Election Day” for a reason.
Sure, we had the pandemic this year, so people could claim that they didn’t want to go to the polls when it would be so busy on the actual day, so they voted early or by mail.
But quite frankly, my entire 2020 Election Day experience took all of 10 minutes, and it was really even shorter because I was in tow with my family, so it really took about five minutes.
So they push to vote early or by mail was pretty much balderdash, as the lines to vote early were way longer than the lines to vote on Election Day.
Mail-in voting should only be reserved for the infirm or the elderly, but this year, just about anybody could mail in their ballots this way.
We can’t have that in 2024 or beyond. It just makes a mess of the day, and in a hotly contested race like this one, it just makes things that much worse.
Let’s get together on Election Day 2024 and do our voting the right way, without any hindrance or flies in the ointment.
So you see, I could do a Rant on the day after this election where I didn’t take sides.
The only side I want to be on is that of the American people, and this year’s presidential election will go down in history as the mess that it is becoming as we count the days, minutes, hours and seconds until we find out who the winner is.
It’s the real year 2525 right here in 2020—notice how I got the plug in for the number of Rants I have written over the past more than a decade—and even Zager and Evans would not be proud of the way the voting has been handled this year.
It has to be fixed--and NOT by the year 2525--and whatever the result, we should all learn from our mistakes and never repeat them—and we have four years to fix things so this type of situation never, ever happens again.
Let’s all vote for that.
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