The Apocalypse that wasn't...
Midterm elections can be a bore, unlike the narratives that make us vote...
While the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections is still uncertain, it looks like we’re heading to a divided Congress, which is hardly an unusual result. The predicted “red wave” didn’t materialize; Trump hasn’t announced his candidacy yet; quite a few sub-par Maga candidates didn’t do very well, no polling places were set ablaze. But that’s not what was predicted, so the media and the political punditry have egg on their faces — another outcome that is hardly unusual.
What did seem unusual was the degree to which trust in the reliability and security of voting has eroded, particularly among the political class — and by that I mean candidates, their operatives, their most ardent supporters, and the media. That loss ripples down through each party in its own stream — Republicans fearing election rigging, Democrats fearing voter intimidation.
From my experience in Georgia and elsewhere, the actual problems at the polling place tend to be quite mundane — not enough equipment, machines that jam, inadequate parking, electricity on the blink, voters getting mixed up about their correct polling place, administrative slowness in recording change of address — the sort of glitches that happen every election everywhere, not especially nefarious even if real problems.
But that’s not what the people most engaged in campaigns were primed for. Republican and Democratic poll observers monitored each other as prospective saboteurs, each collecting evidence that might support litigation. Voters tried to take photos of their ballots to be sure they would get counted. People reported sabotage when a dog got loose at a polling location, an independent monitoring group showed up in black t-shirts, a cop went in to vote. A lot of voter protection work this year was just trying to keep everyone calm.
Sure, there were instances of things going flamboyantly wrong — the New Jersey ballots that went missing, some biased or misinformed poll workers who frustrated voters, the armed ballot box “observers.” But these were more the exception than the rule. More worrying and endemic was the difficulty of people who need assistance getting it — including the disabled, the illiterate or non-English speakers. New laws, regulations and procedures enacted since 2020 make the whole process more arduous and unpleasant, whether its ID requirements, ballot carrying restrictions, ballot count verifications or bans on handing out water or snacks in line. It was not clear to what degree this suppressed the vote, or whether it hurt one party’s chances more than another’s. But by and large, voters withstood the hassle and poll workers tried to help them. Still, the grind and stress take a toll.
Midterm elections typically draw out far fewer voters than the presidential election cycle. It makes a big difference if people sit out the election, skeptical their vote really counts. Those who come out are often the folks who vote every single election, or who are really worked up about something. That gives each party an incentive to make it seem the sky is falling, to get their base out and prod some less committed people into expressing their anxiety at the polls.
This sort of campaigning is self-reinforcing. Apocalyptic messaging works for fundraising, so why not use it to light voters’ pants on fire for the sluggish midterms? But as any party campaign volunteer can tell you, people do weary of hysteria, nagging and and being told the end of the world is nigh. Voters get less responsive, messaging becomes more dire, and there’s a real possibility of making people less, not more motivated to vote.
The media is not blameless in this regard. Democracy at its best can be boring. Poll observers know it’s a snooze to watch the machinery of elections just work the way it’s supposed to — some get tired and prefer to go out and canvass instead. The media spent a lot of time reporting on fears instead of facts in the run-up, with narratives on a spiral of violence and fear, the torrent of misinformation, the anticipation of unprecedented efforts to disrupt the vote, and the like.
Yet despite the steady drumbeat of doomsayers, turnout for the 2022 midterms was fairly strong, and particularly among younger voters. It seems that our fears of election-rigging and extremist disruption haven’t yet overcome our belief we can choose who governs in our name — and who doesn’t. A lot of people are still voting early and on absentee ballots, options that undoubtably increase turnout. And a lot were willing to do the boring thing of waiting in long lines to vote, despite all the legislative efforts to make it more complicated and annoying to do so. The shadow of Trump hung over these elections, just as his presence hung over the 2018 midterms, perhaps sharpening appreciation of the right to choose in a variety of ways.
When people are worried, they vote — but despite the revisionist media narratives, I doubt the critical independent slice were voting on abstractions like the end of democracy or the rigging of the 2020 election. Issues that probably exerted more psychological pressure included an end to the federal right to abortion and the anticipation of more policy upheaval from our unelected the Supreme Court; the mounting evidence of recession; the global energy crisis; the onward march of climate change; the sense that social violence is on the rise and global conflict growing closer.
None of these gathering clouds were exactly on the ballot, nor are they likely to be reversed by the midterm results. But they make voters want their representatives to do something local and immediate — end crime, protect abortion, raise wages, control inflation, lower interest rates, go green — and I think that was what we saw in our somewhat boring, somewhat surprising midterms.
