(Office of the Texas Secretary of State – Facebook)
By Fernanda Tronco
This will be the first time the United States is facing a global pandemic during an election year, according to Brookings, a nonprofit public policy organization.
The uncertainty on if a safe election could be conducted or if one would even happen came into question several times this year.
Due to COVID-19, there are more ways United States citizens can vote in this year’s election, but every state has different rules that can be verified at a local election office, according to USA.gov, . Some states are allowing no-excuse absentee ballots which can be mailed-in or dropped-off in person at a local election office. Another way states are avoiding long poll lines is by having early voting or even curbside voting.
Voters are divided on this year’s election process, according to the Pew Research Center. Polls show 50% of President Donald Trump’s supporters believe elections will be administered very well or somewhat well, while 72% of Former Vice President Joe Biden’s supporters believe elections will be administered very well or somewhat well. Results are due mainly to the distrust in mail-in ballots.
Before the presidential election’s winner was revealed, Jason Corley, Republican Lubbock County Commissioner, said mail-in ballots really concern him, and he thinks voter fraud is very possible and makes him question who the true winner will be.
Before the nation gained a new leader, Jim Baxa, former member of the Lubbock County Republican Party Committee, said he knows voter fraud will happen and there is already malpractice in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia after seeing Biden taking the lead in the respective states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. He said Democrats tend to bribe voters and cheat in these states.
“They hold their counts until they find out how many votes they can cheat with,” Baxa said.
In contrast with these men, John Gibson, Texas House District 84 Democratic candidate, said he does not believe voter fraud will be an issue in this election.
“I really don’t expect them to be an issue, but if they are an issue, then I trust in our court system, and I trust in our institutions to protect our voting process,” Gibson said.
Americans are not only divided on the election process but on whether increase focus on race will lead to major policy change as well due to the high-profile incidents of police brutality against Black Americans and the rise in concern over systematic racism emerging in the past few months, according to analysis by Pew Research.
As of September 2020, 78% of Democrats believe the country has not made enough progress on racial equality for black people, in contrast to 17% of Republicans, according to Pew Research’s polling. With that said, more Republicans believe that not focusing on a person’s race or ‘colorblindness’ will be a big factor in reducing racial inequality.
Race is a big factor in a political party’s makeup as well as their supporters. Non-whites make up four-in-ten Democratic voters and fewer than a fifth make up Republican voters, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.
Kevin Banda – assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University and interim director of the Master of Public Administration Program. (Texas Tech)
Kevin Banda, assistant professor in the Political Science Department at Texas Tech University, said both parties are a coalition of mainly white people, but minorities tend to support Democratic candidates because of their ideals and as a result they are more diverse.
Timothy Nokken, associate professor, and department chairperson of Political Science at Texas Tech, said race is still a very divisive issue in the U.S. — especially in politics — and it has injected increasing conflict among a lot of groups in society in this election.
“Race is a very complex issue in American politics, race does inject differences into the parties, and it does lead, especially white voters, to debate differently at times, but you know, as America becomes more diverse, Anglo voters are no longer the majority in all states, it takes on a different role,” Nokken said.
Nokken said an even bigger factor of why America is so divided has to do with partisan identification, especially during this election where members are divided within the same party.
“Partisan identification is one of the strongest predictors of vote choice, and we can see that not only does that lead them to vote a certain way, but it leads them to kind of process information in a certain way, so partisanship is really, really important, but what is going to be interesting here is how some nominal Republicans will decide how to vote given that there seems to be some discontent amongst some Republicans with President Trump, and is that discontent enough for them having to change their position to vote for Democrats,” said Nokken.
Banda said he does not think the U.S. is divided, but actually more united. Defections among Republicans voting for the other team, he said, have to do more with Trump’s low popularity levels due to his handling of COVID-19. His supporters love him and then the other half of the country thinks he is not great, or he is awful.
Nokken also agrees that people are discontent with Trump’s handling of COVID-19 since it is a referendum of the pandemic’s current status, which he said is a real problem facing America.
Gracie Gomez, Lubbock Democratic Chair, said this divide is the worse she has seen in her lifetime, and it is due to the current toxic political environment of intimidation tactics and harassment.
“Nobody should have to feel like they can’t voice their opinions or support for a party or politician, you know, we shouldn’t feel that way, we shouldn’t feel suppressed about that,” said Gomez.
Gomez said this is the first time the White House has had to be boarded up during a presidential election in fear of an attack, mentioning the attacks on Biden’s campaign bus while on tour urging their supporters to cast their ballots.
“We’ve got to find a way to get back to decency and take that rhetoric that can cause violence out, we’ve got to get it out,” Gomez said.
Before Biden was announced the projected winner, Nokken said he has also seen more concern for violence during the election year and would not be surprised if people engage in questionable behavior and confrontation.
This is a high-stakes election and a very significant choice between candidates offering two very different visions for the U.S., he said, so it is normal for the public to react.
“Since World War II, I think we’ve reached an increasing realm of partisan polarization and now it’s manifesting not just in partisan difference,” Nokken said, “but very Trump-specific differences, so the fact that we are now concerned with violence at the polls, and that confrontation between groups supporting candidates staying in place, it really does seem that this has activated an animosity between different groups in America that think very contentious political environment.”
Lubbock County Precinct 2 Commissioner Jason Corley, a Republican, spoke before the projected winner was revealed, and said he does not anticipate riots — at least not in Lubbock.
John Gibson, Texas House District 84 Democratic candidate, also said he hoped there would not be any civil unrest after the election is finalized but nothing is certain.
“I hope that that unrest doesn’t rise to the level that it’s any type of destruction of property and those kinds of things,” Gibson said.
Gibson said he does think the nation is divided, but this polarization is due more to a generational shift because people have a difficult time making transitions.
“I’m hopeful that after this election things will get back to normal and those divisions will largely go away,” Gibson said.
The actual reason for division is due to America becoming a Godless society and kids being raised apart from the church, Baxa said.
“We all say things are getting worse, it’s because we don’t have God,” Baxa said. “It’s not just our religion, but it’s the true religion–the true God that created Heaven and Earth.”
Not having God’s influence has also led both parties to move further left, he said.
“Both parties have moved drastically to the left over the last couple of decades,” he said, “and the Republican Party of today is very
far to the left from the Republican Party when I was a child, and the Democrat Party is so far left they become socialists
on to communists, and so anybody who is in the middle of things should be very scared of where the Democrat Party is
today.”
People are not seeking the truth, Baxa said, they believe what they want to believe as long as it personally benefits them.
President Donald Trump (Facebook)
“Division ultimately comes because we have one side or another, sometimes both, that are not seeking truth, they’re declaring what they want to do and they are willing to go to radical extremes to get what they want, and that’s where division comes from–its lack of truth,” Baxa said.
On election night, during the uncertainty of who the next president will be, both presidential candidates took to the social media platform.
Trump began to declare victory before the next president was officially declared, according to his personal Twitter account.
“I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!,” Trump said in a Tweet.
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