American election seasons are way too long. In other countries, you get six weeks to campaign, and you spend the rest of your time doing your job; here, we’ve had candidates spending literally years on the road, splitting their time between the Senate and reassuring Iowans that no, of course I don’t want to change anything about the ridiculous program that pays you to throw corn away, that’s the backbone of our economy, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha are you laughing with me yet ha ha ha.
But, death march that it is, it comes to an end tonight. We have been waiting all this time, for results, yes, but also for the campaigns to be done, for the commercials to be done, for the endless cycle of hype and anxiety and worry to be done, and tonight we will finally know what the future holds and we will be able to move on with our lives.
I mean, unless it’s close and some result is disputed and the Democrats and Republicans argue about it in court for some indeterminate period of time ha ha ha ha ha ha are you laughing with me yet ha ha ha.
Oh, and also some states didn’t allow pre-counting of already received mail-in ballots, so they’re going to be slower to report results, and if one of those states is incredibly close and allows receipt of ballots postmarked by Election Day then we won’t know the results in that state for several days, or maybe Republicans will sue to stop those late-arriving ballots from being counted and presumably win, if either they get a judge friendly enough or if they take it to a Supreme Court handpicked to deliver pro-Republican rulings, so maybe tonight we’ll already know as much as we’ll ever know.
Isn’t our form of representative democracy fun? Doesn’t it make you feel inspired with the power you have with just a vote? Go America!
The thing we can say for certain is that today, we wrap up the part of election season where normal people vote. It is likely that we will know the winner of the election by midnight Pacific time, but not certain; it is likely that by then we will have a good idea of who won which states, but that is not certain either. Despite what the current President says, this is entirely normal: states have never had an obligation to report final results on election night, and so they haven’t, because they haven’t had final results. They will also not have final results tonight, because counting votes and receiving votes both take time. Again, totally normal.
Like our MTV, we want our results. But it is silly to demand they all come tonight. If we are used to instant gratification, we just might have to get over it. If a certain powerful government figure gets on one on Twitter about how unfair the process is to him personally, well, just remember that he also says that about cable rebroadcasts of Home Alone 2.
I promise you, I want this election (and election season) to be done with as much as anyone. But no complaints if it takes longer than I’d like it to, no conspiracy theories if a swing state takes a while to count votes. We’re all adults here. We can all act like it. Hopefully, in January, we’ll have a President who can too.