It’s Finally Here
The polls are now open for election day voting in Iowa; they’ll remain open until 8 p.m. tonight. That’s when KXEL’s election night coverage will start, and we hope you’ll join us on the radio, on line or via the app, or through Facebook Live.
In past years, this is when I’d talk about how wonderful our system is, how we separate ourselves from the rest of the world through our peaceful transition of power, how casting informed votes is our responsibility as citizens, etc.
I still believe all that, at least as an ideal. But the past two decades of a losing political party sowing seeds of dissent and challenging the propriety of the process has caught up with us. To be clear, the accuracy of Iowa’s count and process has never been in question, and I’m confident no matter which party is in charge, we’ll keep it that way.
But the enhanced vitriol, the assertions-without-merit—that’s taken a lot of the shine off election days. Again, it’s not limited to one party, or one election. Certainly Democrats were sour on the 2000 presidential election, and had taken regularly to challenge the electoral college count long before Republicans talked about it after the 2020 campaign. Leading Democrats in 2016 refusing to accept that we use the electoral college instead of popular vote, or in 2018 declaring fraud in a governor’s race in Georgia without a single bit of evidence other than surprise that they didn’t win. By 2020, there was actual evidence of tampering, perhaps not enough to change the outcome—but you can’t even suggest it neutrally and rationally without being branded as a denier and subjected to investigation yourself.
Lots of folks are talking about “democracy being under threat”…well, it always is, because a population that does not cast informed votes takes its right to vote for granted, and the republic can easily be lost as a result.
This election will be determined by turnout, pure and sample. Don’t care what polls say. Don’t care what happened in the past. Only care about who took the time to study up and cast a ballot before the polls close at 8 p.m. today.
Beyond who wins…my deep hope is that the results are true, correct and fair to give people confidence in veracity of the totals…because that is the only way our republic and representative democracy works.
