Count every vote — before the finger-pointing begins, please
By: Teresa Albano
Tags: Politics, Election 2020, Equality, Voting, Society

Lake Michigan sunrise photo by Teresa Albano.

The sun still rises. Let’s slow it down and take a breath.

Then let’s make sure every — and I do mean EVERY — legitimate ballot cast in 2020 is freaking counted!

Would we have wanted a landslide? Yes, of course. But a win for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on the scale of Trump’s 2016 win (a squeaker in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) would be OK by me too.

And here’s the thing: the totals are not even in from these states and may not be for a while. Yet Trump threatens to shut down the legitimate vote count! What is being reported in many states is in-person Election Day and in-person early voting. The mail-in ballots and provisional ballots take longer. So don’t let the chaos and pandemonium that Trump loves to create, sweep you away. Take another breath.

Author’s 20-year old poster from the Florida recount of 2000.

I was an election judge yesterday. Last night, we knew that Biden won 132 votes and Trump won 94 votes in the precinct I worked. But my vote wasn’t included in that tally because I voted by mail. In-person early voting and mail-in ballots get folded into the precinct total by the city Board of Elections. Ballots can be received up to 14 days after the election in some states, three days in others. After the city has its totals, it gets added into the county and state totals, where the same process goes on in other precincts, wards, congressional districts, counties, etc.

Imagine what’s happening in seven counties in Pennsylvania where you have leadership that is actively saying, “we’ll report Election Day results but the absentee voting is going to wait.” That creates what has been called a “Red Mirage” for Trump. And we all know, Trump has thrived on smoke and mirrors his entire life.

I don’t know about you but I got my clear-eyed glasses on. Count every vote and then let’s talk.

Before the band of leftist “we told you so’s” strikes up their anti-Biden laments, count the effing votes and then let’s talk.

Yesterday, in the blue, blue precinct I live in, lots of people voted for Trump, including young and old, Polish and Latino immigrants. That’s the make up of the Election Day voters here. So instead of saying, “If Biden and the Democrats were only more left, more progressive,” maybe one should wonder why the heck so many people like this horror show?

I have some thoughts about it. Trump makes his supporters feel good about themselves. They go to rallies, meet people from around a region who think like them and discover how good and powerful it feels. It’s stuff upon which political movements are based.

Unfortunately, from my vantage point, it’s a movement based on meanness and cynicism, not on uplift and equity for all. It’s mainly fed by the polluted river of racism, in particular the country’s virulent headwaters of anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and all their institutional and cultural forms.

Trump pays the psychological “wages of whiteness,” as scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois once wrote, and obviously those wages of “public deference and titles of courtesy” get snapped up by most white people. But the racism and sexism endemic to the Trump “brand” also have their effects on Black, Indigenous and other people of color, as witnessed by Trump’s inroads into these communities.

Other significant streams feed the meanness movement as well, including gender oppression, anti-labor and anti-immigrant ideology, antisemitism, attacks on LGBTQ+ people, workers and unions, government and the public sphere, science and women’s rights. These realities of U.S. politics and life are stubborn things and all the left slogans, like Medicare for All, aren’t going to change the course of these streams.

However, the big tent approach of the Democrats might, with sustained effort and a solidarity spirit around common causes. I thought the Biden/Harris campaign managed to encapsulate that. I cannot imagine a left presidential campaign getting this far. Maybe sometime but probably not in my lifetime.

I’m sure the left will hold up the important and decisive reelections of the four well known left-progressive congresswomen (often refered to as The Squad) — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of N.Y., Ilhan Omar of Minn., Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — as models to emulate nationwide. Even though almost half the nation voted for Trump. Among wide swaths of the left, that reality doesn’t seem to sink in.

I hope the left would consider important as well the overwhelming victory of Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas, a member of the Ho Chunk Nation, a lesbian and “staunch supporter” of LGBTQ+ rights and racial equity. Two years ago, Davids ran against and defeated a Sen. Bernie Sanders- and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez-backed candidate in the Democratic primary. Davids did not embrace “Medicare for All” like her primary rival. It was Davids, not the left-endorsed candidate, who won.

Davids went on to make history in 2018, being one of two Native American women ever elected to Congress. She won re-election this year by a big margin, as did other progressives and moderates from Reps. Katie Porter of California and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.

Unfortunately some others from that 2018 class lost to Republicans or are losing to them. I bring up Davids to say that in many, many parts of the country, a left-only program will not capture the imagination or the wants of the people in these areas. I hope the leading lights of the left keep these races in mind before pushing for a cookie-cutter left program for all.

It may be a cliche but people, politics and social change are indeed complicated. California voters sided with gig giants like Uber, Lyft and Door Dash, against drivers, labor union and worker rights activists. Florida voters gave Trump a win and said they want a $15 minimum wage. Kansas elected the first openly transgender Native American to a state legislature. When all the votes are counted, and thanks to, in large part, the outpouring of Black voters in the Midwest and Latino voters in the Southwest, Joe Biden will most likely be elected president and Kamala Harris will make history as the first woman, African American and Asian vice president. That will be — to borrow a Joe Biden phrase — a BFD.

Instead of panicking about the closeness of this election, I feel calm and confident in the coalition of voters the Biden/Harris campaign put together. There is a solid moderate-progressive Democratic leadership who want to work with the left. Biden has been the most pro-labor candidate I have ever heard.

The Trump movement will continue so unity across race, gender and class lines for equity, justice and democracy is critical. The left can and should play a role in building that unity, starting with joining in the demand and organizing to COUNT EVERY VOTE.