Well, friends. I have recently undergone what will likely be
one of my largest college adventures: voting in my first election ever. And how
cool that it was a presidential election! I considered my strategy carefully. I
decided to vote at home by absentee ballot rather than at my college, both
because New Hampshire is a swing state and because I wanted to vote for the
other elected officials that would affect my own home state. I filled out my
absentee ballot with excitement, seriousness, and conviction. I began the
election as a Bernie supporter, but I had no problems with switching over to
Hillary, and while it wasn’t the reason for my choice I felt good about having
voted for possibly the first woman president in US history. I knew voting was
important, and I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet, but in my youthful
optimism I believed there was no possible way someone as awful as Trump could
become the president of my country.
The morning after Election Day, that youthful optimism was
forever shattered. I woke up at 7:45 for my 8:30 class (ew) and, far less
bleary-eyed than usual, grabbed for my tablet. The results read out on the
screen in red: Donald Trump as the next President, with a Republican House and
Senate to back him. I dropped my tablet and sat there on my bed with my head in
my hands, in shock for a good ten minutes. How the fuck did this happen? How is
a certifiable cartoon villain the next President of my country? Yesterday I
pouted and ate my feelings, but today it’s time to fight, starting with
answering those questions.
How the fuck did this happen,
anyway?
Fear-Mongering
This was a large part of Trump’s campaign from the
beginning, and honestly I thought we were better than it. There’s that naïve
optimism again. Our next president won with a campaign which advocated mass
deportations, closing off our borders, and literally
building a giant wall between us and another country! That’s insane! The
last time humans divided themselves with a giant wall, it did not end well.
Just ask Berlin.
It would seem logical, then, to assume that Trump’s
supporters are either insane, stupid, or both. I can’t refute any of those
claims completely, and in plenty of cases I’m sure they’re true. But I’ve met
Trump supporters. Probably about half of my family is made up of Trump
supporters, and in most respects, most of them are very intelligent people.
However, they’re scared. And that’s not entirely unreasonable, in and of
itself. The world is a scary place, ISIS is a scary thing, and I don’t think
anyone is trying to deny that. If you’re not at least a little bit scared of
some of the things going on in our world right now, you’re probably not paying
attention.
The problem occurs when that fear is misdirected, which is
at least part of the reason why rural areas tend to be red and urban blue.
Cities (and the surrounding areas) tend to have a more diverse populous. For
people growing up in those areas, the people Trump wants to blame the problems
of the world on are real people in their everyday lives, and it’s more
difficult to see them as boogeymen. But that’s not the case everywhere. I was
fortunate in my education and my parents, and I never bought into the
fear-mongering. But it’s also true that I had never met a Muslim before I came
to college, and I found myself with a few shattered expectations when I did.
For people who grew up places like where I did, where fear is bred into the
populous and the only example of a Muslim they have ever seen is the extremist
kind, it is easy for Trump’s version of events to look terrifyingly real,
especially for people who never leave these tiny homogenous communities.
An at Least Somewhat Valid Sense of Disenfranchisement
I don’t agree with this, and I don’t think in any way that
this disenfranchisement compares to that felt by minorities and women in this
country at the moment. That being said, if we want to close the gaping skism
between us and them, we have to at least try
to understand the other side. A lot of working class America feels as
though it’s been left behind by the Democratic party, and honestly it’s not
wrong. Employment, while better than it was at the beginning of President Obama’s
eight years, is still in peril in many ways. Dems have been talking about
making it better for a long time, but we haven’t really delivered. Trump has
promised to champion these people. I don’t believe him. I think his plans will
harm this demographic more than help. But the current system hasn’t really been
helping them either. If we want to get at least some of these votes back, we
need to make working class America more of a priority than it has been.
The Electoral College
Without the Electoral College, Hillary Clinton actually won
the election. According to the results that Google has up, Hilary beat Trump by
301,002 votes. I want to say that we as a country can take heart in the fact
that more Americans chose Hillary than Trump, and to a degree we can, but it is
also important to point out by how thin a margin. Neither major candidate garnered
a majority of the vote, but Trump did win with 279 electoral votes to Hillary’s
228.
So why do we have the Electoral College if it dilutes the
opinions of American citizens on the whole? There was a time when it made sense
to have the Electoral College. This was the same time that something like the
Three-Fifths Compromise, stating that slaves counted as three-fifths of a
person for census purposes, made sense to us. This sounds like nothing short of
insanity now, but it was linked to the delicate balance of state’s rights. At
the time, the American colonies considered themselves to more or less be separate
entities that had come together to fight a common enemy. It became clear that
the loose confederation under the Articles of Confederation did not provide
enough of a union, but states still thought of themselves as largely independent.
The Electoral College in concert with the Three-Fifths Compromise made sure the
north could not maintain dominance over the south, which was a large concern at
the time. Another issue was the general education of the populous. Most people
simply did not have the means to make informed decisions.
Neither of these concerns are concerns anymore. It’s not
true in the case of every individual certainly, and I think most of us have a
certain degree of pride for our home states, but I think most people identify
as Americans before they identify as citizens of their states. I know I’m proud
to be from New Hampshire, but I’m a citizen of the United States before
anything else. And education in America is far superior to what it was at the
time the Constitution was written. Currently 88.4% of the population aged
twenty-five and older are in possession of a high school level education. If we
look at only the twenty-five to thirty-four age group, the percentage is 90.5.
Education is on the rise, and at this point the majority of voters are
qualified to make the decision of who the face of their country is directly.
Frankly, the system comes out of an era that has been gone
for a very, very long time. It’s difficult, in a way, to question the electoral
college, because it is built into the constitution of our country, the very
foundation of our civilization. However, our founders recognized that the
country would not be stagnant, and in their wisdom they incorporated a system
to legally change the constitution. In respect to the Electoral College, it is
time to use that system.
Voter Apathy
To anyone who was somehow prevented from voting, either
through some sort of bureaucratic screw-up or voter intimidation, none of this
applies to you and I’m terribly sorry you had to face such an injustice.
Guys, this is the one that makes me the angriest. I find it
even more frustrating than the bigotry driving a large portion of Trump supporters.
This kind of lack of care, not bothering to vote, is the epitome of unacceptable.
If you stand by and watch something happen, you are complicit in it weather you
want it to happen or not. Voting is not a privilege. Voting is your civic duty,
and you owe your country no less than to show up and do it. I have a similar
frustration with protest voters. While I agree with the sentiment that the
bipartisan system is rigged, this is not the way to vote it. We have to work
within the system while we still have it, and fight for change between
elections rather than in them. That being said, protest voting is more understandable
(to me at least) than not voting. I cannot imagine the lack of drive that must exist
in someone to simply not show up to the poles. Our eligible voting population
is 231,556,622. Only 131,741,500 ballots were counted. That means only 56.9% of
our eligible voting population came to the poles. That is an abysmal statistic.
I am ashamed to say that this is a problem prevalent in my
own generation. I admit that I couldn’t find numbers for this election. Perhaps
they’re not out yet. But last election, only 46% of eligible millennials (defined
as ages 18-35) showed up to the polls. Those numbers are abysmal. Abysmal. Most people my age who don’t
vote say it’s because their vote does not matter. I assure you, it does. It.
Does.
My home state of New Hampshire has historically been a swing
state, which is a large part of why I decided to vote at home instead of in New
York, where I’m currently living for college. As I watched the poles on Tuesday
night, Trump and Clinton were running within a percent of each other pretty
much the whole time. I was sweating watching New Hampshire vacillate between being
blue and being the only spot of red in the New England area. I yelled at the
screen, “Don’t you embarrass me like this!” By the time the results were in, I
was relieved New Hampshire came out blue. With such a close race, it was clear
that every vote mattered there.
I’m not going to lie to you and pretend the system is
perfect. Personally, I agree with you that it’s kind of fucked. But it’s not
impossible to work with. We might not elect the president directly at the
moment, but we do elect them. The way the population of a state votes
determines how the electoral representatives of the state votes, and every
single vote casts contributes to that. This graphic has been circulating,
showing what the election would’ve been like if only millennials voted:
Obviously this could not have been the map on Tuesday. Millennials
are not the only generation that would have voted. However, we are a large part
of the voting public. We are a generation large enough to rival the Baby
Boomers, and we could’ve had some sway, especially in the swing states. For
this election, I’m specifically looking at Pennsylvania. It flip-flopped between
red and blue for quite some time. At twenty electoral votes, PA could’ve kept
Hillary in the game. Millennials easily could’ve pulled this swing. With PA and
just a couple other swing states, Hillary would’ve won the electoral vote to go
with the popular vote. If a larger portion of the voting population turned out,
it would be far more difficult to have a discrepancy between electoral and
popular votes. We have the power to affect political change, Millennials. But we have to fucking show up to do it.
What can we do about it?
Keep Protesting
Honestly, guys, I’m not a trained political analyst, but it
doesn’t seem to me like this will do too much, politically. Trump is our
President-elect as hard a pill as that is to swallow. We can work to change the
system that allowed it to happen, but we can’t change it retroactively.
However, these protests can have a couple of affects. One, they will let Trump
know that a large portion of the country does not agree with what he has planned.
As Trump doesn’t care what others think, I don’t think this will alter what he
does much, but it will still be an important statement. More importantly, these
protests make a statement to everyone marginalized by this election that people
are still standing with them and will not abide poor treatment of them. It is imperative
that these protests are peaceful and respectful. Most of the ones I’ve witnessed
have been, but some toed a dangerous line. We won’t garner respect and open a
dialogue by lowering ourselves.
Petition for The End of The Electoral College
A petition to this end has already been circulating the
internet. I’ve added my name, and I urge you all to add yours. Bringing this to
the attention of our congress through a petition is an excellent first step.
Opposition to the Electoral College is common on both sides of the political
spectrum, so I am fairly confident it has a chance of passing, though it will
take a Constitutional Amendment. An eventual new amendment requires three
fourths of the states in the Union to ratify, but this is a possibility. When a
possible new amendment comes up, make it to the poles! Vote! It’s important, I
promise!
Focus on the 2018 Midterm Elections
Honestly, I can’t say much about this right now. They’re
pretty far out, so there’s not too much information on who’s running. However,
I can say that historically the party flips during these elections. A
Democratic majority Senate and House would go a long way to mitigate the
damages of Trump’s presidency. But again, we have to vote to make this happen.
I’m looking at you, Millennials! We can do this! We are the future, and that
future can be now.
Safeguard Planned Parenthood and The Environment
The results of the midterm elections can’t stop Trump in the
next two years, so that’s up to us. Planned Parenthood and the Environment are
what I think we should be the most concerned about during the next two years. One
thing I find heartening in all this even with Trump having his party majority
in both houses of Congress is how many Republicans came out against Trump. Even
many of them think he’s crazy, and I have at least some hope that they’ll block
some of his more extreme agenda points. These points seem like the easiest for
Trump to pursue. Therefore, they will likely be pursued first.
Planned Parenthood has had a huge target on its back as far
as Republicans are concerned. They’ve been trying to defund a crucial service
for years because of one aspect that shouldn’t be controversial but is and
which already cannot be done with tax money. That’s right, I’m talking about
abortions. What women do with their bodies is not the business of anyone but
the individual woman, and yet politicians keep sticking their noses in it. And
in this nose-sticking, they attack vital services such as access to contraceptives
and breast cancer screenings. President Obama has already taken steps to
protect Planned Parenthood before he leaves office, but it won’t be enough to
stop Trump on its own, so the rest is up to us. Donate time or money, or write
to your representatives, or do all three if you can. Make it clear how
important Planned Parenthood is to our nation.
Be Kind to Each Other
This may seem like the most trivial thing on this list, but
it’s actually the most important. We’ve already seen the horrifying backlash of
Trumps win. Men have been celebrating the win by grabbing women’s crotches. School
children are terrified of their families getting broken up. A woman in Walmart
had her hijab ripped off her head and was told to hang herself with it.
Anti-LGBT hate crimes have spiked. Really, just more overall horriblness than I’m
going to take the time to list right now. The world is a fucking scary place
right now, but being afraid won’t fix that. Kindness will.
It’s amazing how far a smile, a kind word, a hug can go when
it seems like the whole world is against you. This is a similar notion to the
reason I think we should keep protesting even if it doesn’t bring about political
change. It proves to people that even though the voices yelling out against
them right now are the loudest, they are not the strongest, and they will not
be allowed to intimidate us.
We’re on a sliding scale of fuckedness right now, and it is
undeniable that some of us in the movement are more privileged than others. Don’t
waste time feeling guilty about having those privileges. I’ve been there, we’ve
probably all been there, but it’s not productive and this isn’t the time for a
pity party. Instead of feeling bad about your privilege, use it for the greater
good. I’m a middle-class white queer woman, so I have two strikes against me in
Trump’s America, but one of those strikes can’t be seen just by looking at me
and honestly I’m probably safer than a lot of other people in this country
right now. If I see a person of color being harassed for their race, or a
Muslim woman facing religious discrimination, I have enough privilege to stand
with them, and I will. White guys, if your female friends or friends of color
have to go somewhere alone, especially at night, go with them. Your presence
alone will be a deterrent against people who would attack them.
No one should do anything that makes them feel unsafe. But none of
us should have to feel unsafe walking down the street, and if we stand together
we won’t have to. If we stand together, we can show them we are better than the
fear they want to instill in us. We are loving people who are loved in return.
The last part of this plan is more difficult, and it’s not
for everyone. Unfortunately, there are people it won’t be safe for. But those
of us who can safely do this must. We have to reach across the other side of
the aisle and open a dialogue. Progress will remain stalled as long as there’s
such a huge divide between just about two halves of our country, and it’s imperative
that we start working together. We can begin to build relationships over
bipartisan issues such as the Electoral College. And once those bridges are
built, both sides need to use them and listen to each other. We can defeat the
fear mongering if people just interact with us and see that groups of people
who have been demonized to them are really just people. And we might find that
on issues that don’t have to do with setting civil rights back fifty years, the
other side has some valid points. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness
cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.” I cannot think of more apt words for our current
situation.
Sources Sited
