A hundred fifty million votes.
That is likely to be about the number of votes cast in the 2020 U.S. election – by far a record turnout.
The herculean responsibility and task of insuring that all of these American votes are recorded and reported accurately has been delegated, as always, to a cadre of dedicated citizens who are still working at it in several states across the country..
So why joining in a salute to them “NOW” is so important:
First, it is a timely recognition of the invaluable service of these dedicated Americans – not incidentally, performed during renewal of a raging pandemic. It is also another affirmation that the election, already called in favor of President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris, can and should proceed to their inauguration on January 20th, 2021.
Critically important too, it is bestowed in the wake of an implicit attack on the election workers’ integrity and efficiency by an American president who not only has called the resulting ballot tabulations a fraud and a hoax but has also committed to the most dangerous transition of an American administration since the installation of Abraham Lincoln in 1861.
So who are these election-worker patriots? They span the American workforce.
. On-site at voting centers and ballot-counting facilities –
In arguably the most complex balloting system in American presidential election history, thousands of election workers have examined the record-breaking turnout accumulating in three basic waves: early voting, voting on Election Day November 3rd, and mail-in voting arriving with various state deadlines. In addition to amassing – of course – the votes for each candidate, many provisional ballots have generated special challenges.
In our unofficial tabulation, the ten states broadly considered “swing states” will total approximately twenty million mail-in votes when voting is completed. No verifiable projection for a fifty-state total of mail-in votes seems readily available.
The exhaustive process of tabulating all of these votes required experience and ability at several levels of expertise and service. In many states sheer volume required twenty-four hour – or near that – compilation more than once.
. In support of the counting sites
A special call-out is appropriate for the U.S. Postal Workers. Despite many attempts at voter suppression of mail-in ballots by Trump appointees at USPS high management levels during the campaign., the intrepid mail handlers managed to deliver, on time. many millions of these ballots – that finally manifested the winning margins. Not be overlooked also are the professionals such as lawyers, judges and journalists who have been and still are serving as guardians of democracy in an election in these extremely trying times.
Even as the ballot counting is being completed by the very reliable election workers, the President is undermining the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. Not only is he unlikely to concede; he and his abettors are mining many unprecedented, if even temporary, operational obstacles. This is in the face of wide and growing support for the successful election of the Biden-Harris ticket. Many American and international leaders — from the Mideast (for example, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) to Europe, Asia and Micronesia – have proffered affirmation of the validity of the election and congratulations to the President -Elect and Vice-President Elect. And it is more than parenthetical that the President has in recent days totally ignored resurgence of COVID-19 while the President-Elect has already appointed a COVID-19 scientific task force.
We can expect more Trump Administration distraction, obfuscation and turmoil in the weeks ahead. All the more reason to give due praise and admiration to our fellow-citizen election works – NOW and well into the future.