The Wisdom of Election Day

November 3, 2024

Two days to Election Day, 2024.  In these few remaining hours before the most consequential election of our lives, we Americans would do well to read or review the Constitution for the United States of America, the Supreme Law of our Land. 

The Constitution is the citizen’s operating manual for American freedom.  Fortunately, the Constitution, roughly 7,500 words, is a document you can carry around in your pocket and consult.  When an issue comes up, Americans can say, “Let’s see what the Constitution has to say about that.” 

Tens of millions of people, generations of immigrants, including my immigrant forebears, came to America, studied the Constitution, qualified for citizenship, bought land, worked, raised families, benefited from free American life—and voted. 

We Americans would do well to value Election Day.  Elections are how Americans change regimes peacefully.  In these volatile times, we cannot passively take elections for granted.  We must make sure our district’s ballots are counted and reported.  Hand-counted paper ballots are the gold standard for tamper-proof elections.

This past week, burning ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington demonstrated the vulnerability of the universal vote by mail and drop-box system—and the wisdom of one Election Day. 

On Election Day, as it worked until recently, we Americans would attend polling places, verify our signatures on the voter rolls, and vote paper ballots.  Citizens of all political persuasions would scrutinize the process as ballots were hand counted and saved, and vote totals were reported to local, state and federal election officials.  Often there were picnics and potlucks where the issues of the day were vigorously discussed.

On Election Day, as it worked until recently, we and our neighbors visited a local polling place--school gymnasium, county clerk’s office, community center--a public place where voting booths were set up.  Each citizen entered the voting booth, drew the curtain, marked the ballot, and deposited the ballot in a box to be hand-counted after the polls closed. 

Voting is a private and sacred act, when all the discussions and reading and soul-searching we have done before Election Day boil down to marking on paper the candidates of our choice.  And voting is a public thing, voting is our free will choice made public.

This is our tradition that kept America free for almost 250 years: Americans vote on Election Day.  Except now, with mail in ballots and drop boxes and ranked choice votes that must be tabulated by the secretary of state and may take weeks to figure out, there is no Election Day.  It’s Election Month, and it’s lousy with loopholes: to rig elections, to siphon ballots into electronic systems counted by centralized computers programmed to be manipulable Election Night, with paid actors harvesting ballots to deliver into swing state voting districts between midnight Election Night and the morning after Election Day.  For shame.

Election Day has been messed with until it no longer resembles the elections set up by our Constitution.  American elections have become a street war, an opera of buffoonery with bad actors doing evil things and hoping no one will notice.  Every other nation on earth hand counts paper ballots, and so should America. 

“What does the Constitution say about this?”  According to the Constitution, your state legislature determines how elections are held in your state.  Talk to your state legislators if you and your neighbors see needed reforms.

Did we find common ground?  These five essays, on substack.com under Snake River Music Gardens, have been our attempt to find common ground with all Americans. How did we do?  Did we find common ground?  You are cordially invited to take a look at our four previous substack essays, What It Means to Be American, This Election Will Have Consequences, Republic or Democracy? and Common Ground, and contribute your comments. 

Gratitude.  We end these five essays with gratitude for your having taken the time to read and ponder them.  On this Sunday, November 3, we are grateful to Nature, for despite a season of wildfires in Eastern Oregon our cattle and crops survived, rain is falling in our valley today, there is snow on our mountains, and thus life continues.  We are grateful to God, for we all dwell in Our Father who gives each human the priceless gift of free will choice. 

May we each exercise our free will choice responsibly in this election.