Today is election day in the US. At times, it seems to dominate the news media more so than the UK election did! I thought it would be fun to do a post about the US election, told through Venn diagrams.
What happened in Texas
In Texas this week, Trump supporters ambushed a campaign bus of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, intimidating them and causing the bus to abandon their campaign events. Trump later took to Twitter to praise his supporters for intimidating the Biden campaign bus.The central area of the Venn diagram is where such events occur: the intersection of far right leadership, an election, and guns. It's not entirely clear to me whether guns were used in the ambush, but certainly, in a country where gun crime and civil unrest go hand in hand, it is no wonder that the Biden camp were afraid of gun violence. It was in Texas too, a state well-known for its love affair with guns.
Postal votes and fraud
Studies have found no significant connection between postal voting and fraudulent voting - no more than in-person voting, anyway.
How I'll feel when watching the election results
The election seems to have been in the news for an eternity. Considering that the UK is not the 51st State of the USA, it's interesting to see that the media covers the US election with almost as much interest and passion as it follows our own elections. It's big and important, sure, but I would like it to be over now. But it'll be a while till it's truly over, because it takes quite a while to count all the postal votes. Why they can't employ more vote counters is anyone's guess, but apparently it can take "weeks" to count them.
Why we'll watch it
Any news that is unrelated to covid-19 (or Islamist terrorism in Europe) is like a breath of fresh air. A second big reason is that car crash gawping tendency we have; like watching a horror film through your fingers. I want to watch, but I daren't, for fear of what might happen.
Public opinion
This last Venn diagram speaks for itself. The world is crossing its fingers.
Disclaimer:
These Venn diagrams are not scientific, and reflect only the sense I get from the news media. The internet is something of an echo chamber, and so it's very possible that the impression I've got from the news outlets I read is not the correct one.
A final note on democracy
Democracy is great. When people vote, the people should get what they want. I've written elsewhere that the first past the post system is flawed. In the US 2016 election, for example, Hilary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump, but Trump won the election. That doesn't seem right: I believe that whoever gets the most votes should win the election. Whether or not I like Trump is irrelevant; all that matters is whether the majority of American people vote for him. If they do, then it's right that he becomes President again.
I've written elsewhere that we should respect politicians because they are, after all, only attempting to represent the views of the people. Trump has some abhorrent views, but if those are the views of the American people, then it's fair for him to win the election, because democracy is more important than getting what you want. This is particularly true for someone such as myself, who is not American; my opinion on US politics really counts for nothing.
EDIT: 4 Nov at 11.20 am GMT. So far, it's 238 electoral votes to Biden, and 215 to Trump. It's not over yet though.
EDIT: 5 Nov at 9.10 am GMT. Biden has 264 electoral votes, Trump has 214. I don't know how Trump's number of votes has gone down since yesterday, but it seems to have done so. So Biden looks almost certain to win. Trump, being a caricature of himself, is throwing his teddies out of the pram and squawking about fraud, and that he'll take it to the Supreme Court. In totally unrelated news, the Supreme Court is choc-full of Trump's buddies.
Whatever the result of the election, civil unrest seems highly likely in th US in the coming weeks or months. Whether it comes from Trump supporters who believe fraudulent votes have been cast, or from Biden supporters who are angry that democracy isn't being respected, civil unrest seems almost inevitible. Civil unrest in a country where gun crime is already very high. Civil unrest in the country with the world's highest number of coronavirus deaths. Civil unrest in a country where the police and military are horribly heavy-handed. It ain't gonna be good.
EDIT: 6 Nov at 2.20 pm GMT. The result is still uncertain. Still 264 to Biden, 214 to Trump, according to Google. I think Trump is wrong to say that postal votes should be ignored, but he's absolutely right to be exasperated with the amount of time it takes people to count the votes. Jeez! It's simply unbelievable that the country which claims to be the pinnacle of liberty and democracy makes people queue up for 14 hours in order to cast a vote, then takes days or weeks to count the votes. I think kindergarten kids could count faster than this!
EDIT: 7 Nov at 7.35 pm GMT. Hallelujah! There is finally a result to the election! And it "only" took 4 days! What's more, it's the result I for one was hoping for. Biden has won. Not all the votes have been counted yet (wowsers, this counting sure takes a while) but Biden has won more than the magic 270 votes. It's 290, so far. Yay for democracy! Yay for sanity! That said, Trump has secured very close to half of the votes ("the popular vote") - around 48%. Even though I don't like his views, clearly a lot of Americans do, and I think it's only fair that they should have their views represented. Proportional representation is the fairest political system, and it's still fairest even when the person you meant to win is first past the post.
Will Donald Trump accept defeat graciously? If he does, I'll eat my hat.
