By Katie Goss ’23
Staff Writer
“I am really looking forward to the possibility of finally exhaling for the first time in four years,” said Adam Hilton, professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College.
“This is certainly the highest-stakes election of my lifetime, and I think it might be one of the highest stake elections in American history,” he continued. “I will be very relieved to see Trump gone because I think he is a threat to American democracy.”
With issues such as COVID-19, equal human rights, voter suppression and intimidation at play, as well as actions taken by Republican politicians to undermine nationwide confidence in mail-in ballots, the 2020 presidential election has been a political race full of controversy. Due to the drastic divide between supporters of President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, this election is said to be one of the most important in American history. Lynn Morgan, a history professor at Mount Holyoke, compared the 2020 presidential election to that of 1860, which resulted in the secession of the South from the rest of the U.S.
“The 1860 election — which Abraham Lincoln won on a ticket of nonexpansion of slavery into the West — is the closest comparison that can be made with the election of 2020,” Morgan said. “Secession won’t be the result of this election (I hope), but the levels of political acrimony and polarization characterize both elections.”
“No other presidential elections bear such resemblances,” Morgan continued. “I don’t believe that history repeats itself, but I do believe that history can guide us as we try to understand current events. We need to reckon with history now more than ever if we expect to restore and expand upon the civil rights of all people and if we are ever to get serious about tackling economic inequality.”
Hilton agreed with this comparison. “Many people have labeled what we are going through now as something like a low-intensity civil war, and I think there is some truth to that,” He said. “It is like the 1860 and 1864 elections in the ways that it's hard not to see this as a potential breakpoint, a real shift in American politics, and I think there is an opportunity — if Biden wins and the Democrats take the Senate — I think there is a major opportunity for [Biden] to realign American politics in a positive direction.”
Supreme Court involvement
The outcome of this election could bear resemblance to that of the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which was decided by the Supreme Court. After several weeks, the court ruled in favor of Bush. Should the 2020 election be a very close race, it is speculated that it could potentially be decided by the current Supreme Court. However, according to Hilton, it would only go to the Supreme Court if the whole election came down to one or two states.
“I don't even think the Supreme Court will take it up unless it's very close,” Hilton said. “If Biden wins by a substantial margin and Trump says ‘[Biden won] because there are millions of fraudulent ballots,’ that would be even riskier for the courts to weigh in on, because then they wouldn’t be resolving a contested election, they would be overturning the results of an election.”
Some justices on the court have already introduced the idea of discounting large numbers of ballots in many states, potentially in order to skew the vote toward one side after an initial decision has been produced. Hilton specifically pointed out justices Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas, who have already written dissents on how they would vote in regard to mail-in ballots.
According to Hilton, Kavanaugh, Alito and Thomas are signaling a strategy should the election go to the Supreme Court. “The [core group of] conservatives will say that election procedural changes are only legitimate if the state legislature has officially changed them by statute,” Hilton explained, “which is not usually how they've been changed all around the country.
In this situation, state judges usually rule on what is or is not appropriate, as the board of elections or the Secretary of State make arrangements early on. “The Supreme Court is signaling that, if it came to them, they would reject all of those arrangements and all of the ballots cast under those arrangements,” Hilton said. “That would be so bad for them to do something like that, and it would be such a rankly partisan decision. It flies in the face of any rational explanation or strategy.”
After the rushed confirmation to the court of Amy Coney Barrett, along with Trump filling two other Supreme Court seats, many members of the Mount Holyoke community do not have confidence in the high court ruling fairly.
“I don’t have faith in the Supreme Court right now, but I have more faith that [the election] won’t go to the Supreme Court,” Maggie Micklo ’21, president of the College Democrats, said. “I think that was more likely of a scenario a month ago when the polls were a little tighter than they are now. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, and if it happens, I don’t have very much faith that Amy Coney Barrett would recuse herself or that the justices would vote based on the facts.”
“I think it’s a different court than we had in Bush v. Gore, but I think we saw then that ideology can often come first over facts,” Micklo continued. “I think that would be an extremely dangerous thing for just American democracy in general, if this election is decided by a delegitimized court, and puts in place a president that once again does not have the support of the majority of Americans. That is probably the most dangerous and terrifying outcome that I can imagine,” she added.
A rise in mail-in voting
A contested outcome could only go to the court after all votes were counted, which could take a substantial amount of time. Mail-in ballots take the longest to count because they are counted by hand, whereas ballots cast at polling locations are typically electronically scanned or counted by a machine. If a state does not count mail-in ballots until Election Day, it is not possible for them to get through all mail-in ballots in a single day.
Additionally, mail-in ballots that come in after Election Day, even if they are postmarked with a date prior to the day of the election, may be rejected in some states. States that count their mail-in ballots ahead of Election Day, such as Florida, are typically able to produce more accurate projections of who the state will favor on election night. The country will not have an official winner until all ballots have been counted, and since all 50 states are following different mail-in ballot laws, that process could take days or even weeks. Further, with varying time zones, differing state populations and a wide array of laws in regard to voting, the country is not running on the same schedule.
On election night, Hilton explained, “News agencies call a state based on projections, not the actual tallied results.” Because of this, he finds the line of thinking held by Trump and some Republicans that the result must be announced on Nov. 3 “ridiculous.” He added, “It’s never been the case that the election ends on Election Day — it’s just never happened.”
Natalie Glick ’23, who plans to declare a major in politics this year, said it would not be surprising if the results remained unknown the week of the election. “I think [for the] presidential [election], we flat out will not know on [Nov. 3] for various reasons, and I think in a lot of Senate races — especially in Georgia and potentially South Carolina — we’re not going to know about those either,” Glick said. “I think it’s fair to assume that this could be a process that goes on for two to three weeks, similarly with what happened in 2000 with Al Gore [and Bush], which is very scary.”
Because Trump has been openly unsupportive of mail-in ballots, calling them “fraudulent,” many of his supporters were expected to vote in person. For this reason, analysts expected the surge of tallied votes for Trump on election night.
“We can expect to see the ‘red mirage,’ which is that many swing states might turn red early, and then the ‘blue shift,’ which is that as all of those absentee and mail-in ballots begin to be processed,” Hilton said. He added that this change may happen quickly — as early as the morning after the election — or it may take a few days as mail-in ballots continue to be counted.
Counting the votes
As predicted, results were not available on election night.
States like Pennsylvania and Michigan that did not start counting mail-in ballots until Election Day have since said they may need until the end of the week to finish counting. Though these states have been showing a majority in favor of Trump, it has been emphasized by state officials that majorities could change as they count their mail-in ballots.
“Some election results should come up fairly quickly, though in some states (like in Pennsylvania) we may not see election results right away as absentee ballots aren’t being opened up until Election Day,” Sandra Scarlatoiu ’22, president of the College Republicans, said. “I do personally believe this creates a lot of room for voter fraud, so there is a possibility it could be brought to the Supreme Court.”
States which were able to count their ballots before Election Day but do not accept ballots after Election Day, such as Florida, were able to give final results on election night.
Overall, by Nov. 4, 41 states had given their final results, leaving Biden with 253 electoral votes and Trump with 214.
Just after 2 a.m. EST on Nov. 4, Trump gave a statement in the White House to those gathering in support of his campaign. He recounted that he had won the electoral votes in Florida, Ohio and Texas and said that it was “clear” he had also won Georgia and was winning North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
“This is fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” Trump said. “Frankly, we did win the election.”
Although his claim of winning certain states was true at the time of his announcement, those states had stated that they had not counted all of their mail-in ballots by the end of election night. Trump made these claims while he was losing the popular vote, along with holding fewer Electoral College votes. Since his speech, The Associated Press announced that Michigan flipped blue in favor of Biden.
Trump has already opened the possibility that if he loses, this election will be decided before the Supreme Court; however, many legal battles at the state level would need to happen before that point. He is currently fundraising for those legal battles and looking for support from the GOP along with his supporters.
Pandemic influences
The outcome of the election was not the only thing on voters’ minds in the weeks preceding the event. Due to the pandemic, there was a surge in both mail-in and early voting. Because of this, Republicans in many states filed lawsuits surrounding mail-in ballots in order to get a number of them thrown out. Although these efforts were not very successful, Hilton says it was the Republicans’ way of systematically undermining public confidence in this voting method in every way possible.
Micklo stated, “The amount of lawsuits that are happening right now from Republican campaigns or operatives in [an] attempt to throw out ballots — that is just clear voter suppression and trying to rig results that don’t actually match how the country is feeling, which is awful.”
Hilton added, “Not only do we have the uncertainty introduced into the election by the COVID-19 pandemic — which would probably create all kinds of problems on its own — but then it's become such a partisan battle too. Trump has not only been actively trying to undermine the legitimacy of mail-in ballots but more or less the Republican Party is backing that effort in an official capacity.”
Leading up to Election Day, Trump has repeatedly stated that voting by mail has led to fraudulent results and urged his supporters to vote in person. Although there have been a few cases of fraud related to mail-in ballots, a 2017 study by the Brennan Center for Justice showed that the overall amount of voting fraud in the U.S. is less than 0.0009 percent. Additionally, the Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said, “There’s simply no basis for the conspiracy theory that voting by mail causes fraud,” as reported by the BBC.
Assistant Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke Ali Aslam agreed with Hilton’s comments about the conservative push to discredit mail-in ballots. “Trump’s statements about the so-called ‘voter fraud,’ I mean, that’s a throwback to the arguments that Republicans made during [the] Bush and Gore [election], and it is to disqualify a whole number of voters and the outcome [of the election],” Aslam said.
Despite Trump’s claims, early voting and mail-in voting exceeded records this election year. As of Nov. 1, more than 91.6 million Americans had voted early, and 2020 pre-election votes had surpassed two-thirds of all votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. Most states also reached record early voting numbers, with the number of early votes cast in Hawaii and Texas surpassing their total turnout numbers from the 2016 election. Additionally, as of Nov. 3, more than 100 million Americans voted early, projecting the 2020 election to have the highest U.S. voter turnout in over a century.
“We have seen the numbers of people voting and most records have been broken, in terms of early voting and vote by mail requests,” Glick said. “I do think a lot more people voted by mail than normal and [participated in] early voting a lot more in hopes of avoiding big crowds.”
Massive mail-in voting: intentions and realities
Voting by mail can be more complex for voters because officials can decide to not count votes due to something as simple as the signature on the ballot not matching the signature on file. There are many instances in past elections where hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were thrown out for varying reasons. In an election that received a record number of mail-in votes, Democrats are concerned about whether or not they will all be counted.
“I spent my summer researching vote by mail laws in different states, and in a lot of states it’s very confusing how to vote by mail,” Glick said. “They make a lot of loopholes on purpose, and we know in states that have higher rates of voter suppression that they will find reasons to not accept a vote by mail predominantly with signatures.”
“It is really worrisome,” Glick added, “and the problem also is that a lot of states do not have the infrastructure to inform you that your vote has been rejected by mail or they just don’t even tell you. Which means you think that you voted, but you didn’t. And in this election, every vote counts.”
Additionally, just a few days before Election Day, mail delays suddenly hit critical swing states. After Louis DeJoy was appointed by Trump as postmaster general, there were immediate budget cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, which included removing sorting machines and resulted in a slower distribution of mail.
According to The Guardian, the Postal Service delivery rates had previously been around 95 percent. In mid-October, the national delivery rate dropped to 82 percent with locations like Detroit having a delivery rate of 52 percent. In the week leading up to Election Day, news broke that mail-in ballots were being delayed in swing states.
Roscoe Woods, the president of the American Postal Workers Union in Michigan, told The Guardian that the postal service prioritized ballots and election mail and that employees were working overtime.
“I’m from Illinois, and I can mail in my ballot on the day of the election, and if it’s postmarked by the day of the election it will get counted,” Micklo said. “Not having the option to do that in a lot of these key swing states, I think, is really going to affect the results. I don’t know if it will affect the results enough to actually sway a state one way or the other, but it’s definitely concerning.”
The rise in votes by mail is predominantly due to COVID-19. However, the pandemic did not only affect the way a person voted this year; it was also a major factor in who a person voted for.
On Oct. 30, the U.S. recorded the highest number of new cases reported in a single day in regard to any other country. Only Georgia and Hawaii saw a decrease in hospitalizations in October, and with California, cases remained steady. The other 47 states showed increases in their hospitalization numbers, with many states having at least one record-breaking day in new cases reported in a single day during the month.
Trump refused to set a nationwide mask mandate and shut down the country for a set number of weeks to help control the virus, instead allowing states to set their own rules. Because of Trump’s lack of national response to the virus leading to an increased number of deaths and cases, voters affected by it may have voted for Biden over Trump, Aslam explained.
“COVID[-19] has changed everything,” Aslam said. “It’s becoming harder, I hope and guess, to dismiss COVID[-19] as somehow ‘fake news.’ Afterall, the president had also come down with COVID[-19], and he might say this is nothing, but any person who spends a little bit of time following that story knows that he received a level of care that is not available to the rest of us,” he continued. “He was especially lucky, I think you could say, but I don't know if the rest of us would fare at the same age with the same level of risk factors. I think that's first on people’s minds.”
Dangers of in-person voting
Voter intimidation and suppression added additional fear to voting in person for those against Trump, as the president had urged his supporters to go “monitor” the polls. States attempted to counteract these intimidation attempts by banning openly carrying guns at polling locations, like in Michigan, or by simply guarding the locations with sheriffs, like in some counties in Florida and Pennsylvania. Although law enforcement is not typically allowed to stand near polling stations, some states have designated this support in order to prevent voter intimidation.
States have differing laws against what they consider to be “voter intimidation,” though a majority of states collectively hold the same laws accountable. In most states it is legal to hold rallies greater than 150 feet from a polling location, along with being loud and verbally disruptive. Although these actions are frowned upon by poll workers, they are not typically enough to get any authority involved. It is illegal, however, to monitor a poll unless you have gone through the training and been certified to be a poll monitor, along with filming someone dropping off their ballot, hiring private security to monitor a polling location and threatening voters in order to sway their vote.
“I think the most common thing I have seen on social media is this fear of voter intimidation, in Michigan and Wisconsin in particular,” Glick said. “I have gotten a lot of emails from people [in these states] saying, ‘We need poll watchers to come from Illinois and places where we know that no one is going to show up with a gun and try to intimidate people into voting for Trump,’ because it's illegal to do that and everyone has the right to vote. But I think in Michigan in particular, given the plot to kidnap their governor, it’s very real that it could happen.”
Micklo mentioned another type of voter suppression that has been a major issue in regard to the pandemic and social distancing: long waits at polling locations. “There are many stories of people waiting six plus hours or waiting overnight to cast an early vote, and that is another form of voter suppression,” she said. “It's happening in more lower-income [communities] or communities of color, and that is also unacceptable because these locations should be able to hold 100 percent turnout.”
“That’s something I don’t blame on local election workers, that’s something that I blame on states and counties for not properly funding the election infrastructure needed to support what is such high turnout,” Micklo added.
Over the weekend of Oct. 23, two ballot drop-off boxes were burned in Copley Square, which resulted in a total of 40 to 45 ballots being unreadable due to the damage. Ballots that were burned from the fire but are still readable are able to be counted. Those whose ballots were destroyed have been urged to recast their votes immediately.
Additionally, the Biden campaign was forced to cancel an event in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 30 due to harassment from Trump supporters. As the bus was traveling to the event location, Trump supporters in trucks surrounded the bus and slowed down, attempting to run it off the road. Because of safety concerns at the event itself after this unsafe and illegal harassment from Trump supporters, Rep. Sheryl Cole announced the cancellation of the event.
Trump tweeted a video of the incident the next day along with the caption, “I LOVE TEXAS.”
Trump supporters were also encouraged to attend an event hosted by Kamala Harris in Fort Worth, Texas, which ended up being canceled before the incident in Austin. Donald Trump Jr. encouraged Trump supporters to show up to this event as well, saying, “I heard you had an awesome turnout for the Trump Train. It’d be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome,” according to the DailyBeast.
In the wake of election night, the outcome determined or not, businesses across the country boarded up their storefronts to protect them in the event of riots and civil unrest over results. Both national chains, such as Staples and Bed, Bath & Beyond, and local businesses are taking precautions, especially in cities.
Protests, both peaceful and confrontational, broke out in major cities across the country on Election Day, involving both Trump and Biden supporters. Because businesses and cities had prepared for demonstrations, police and security officials were already in these areas to prevent violence. Multiple arrests were made in cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, while other protests took place in Washington, D.C., Raleigh, North Carolina and Portland, Oregon. Additional protests are currently being planned to continue to speak out against Trump and the election’s outcome should he win.
Although we do not know the winner of this historical election as of Nov. 4, citizens are invested in the outcome. With record numbers in voter turnout, many hope this enthusiasm continues in future elections.
“I hope everyone at Mount Holyoke voted and exercised their right [to vote],” Glick said. “I think especially now more than ever, we realize the importance of politics and the importance of having a say in government, and having a government that functions but also someone that represents us as a people.”