Post-Election Day

Well, you can't have everything you want on Election Day!  I suppose it came out pretty well well Progressives like me.  Possibly the best hint of that is that President Trump is royally annoyed.  But I'll stick to the election results...

Locally, there are no surprises in Maryland.  It is a rather solidly Democratic State.  Most every incumbent won, the 2 reasonably sensible referendums passed, and the local Board Of Education candidates were actually all pretty decent choices (sometimes there are whackos).  Gov Larry Hogan is a Republican and won re-election, but that is because he is rather Centrist and has done a good job of being bipartisan.  One has to respect a good Centrist if you want to get things done with support from all over.  His Democratic opponent was also good, but had less experience.

Nationally, I was pleased.  It was pretty clear that the Democrats wouldn't get control of the US Senate.  Far more Democrats were up for election in States that Trump won in 2016, so even random voting would have kept the Republicans in charge there.

The US House went Democratic as expected.  They needed to gain 23 seats; they have gotten 30 and it seems they will get about 4 more after some final votes are counted.  Most experienced professional political types guessed 30-40 and 34 seems likeliest.

That will have a profound effect on Trump (although he denies it and at the same time threatens The House with "investigations").  He is worried.  He always accuses others of what he has done himself, and threatens others with what he fears most himself. 

The House can start investigations of corrupt Trump officials, investigate his previously-hidden tax returns, and can impeach him if enough evidence is found.  Though I should mention (because it is often confused) that impeachment is merely an indictment; any actual trial would be held by the Senate.

Democrats gained about 8 State Governors, which was good.  I particularly cheered the ousting of the Wisconsin Governor, Scott Walker.  He was a real mess.  Among other things, he used an obscure emergency State Law designed to help cities with failed local mayors and/or situations beyond their control to appoint sycophants as City Managers with dictatorial powers. 

But the additional Democratic Governors will be in office during the 2020 post-census redistricting (an adjustment of voting districts due to population changes).  The Republican Governors have had a bad habit of arranging voting districts into weird shapes to arrange elections to their advantage. 

That is called "Gerrymandering".  It isn't a new idea.  The original example is from Governor Gerry in the 1800s in Massachusetts.  Gerry arranged a voting district so weird that it spread across the State in a very strange shape to gather all his opponents into one voting district he was sure to lose while winning all the others.  A local newspaper dubbed it "the Gerrymander" because it resembled a salamander.


Some of that gerrymandering will be undone.  It matters because it violates fair voting.  It has gotten so bad that, in some States, voters can choose one political party by 60% and still only get 1/3 of the House of Representative members. That is obviously not "democracy".

I will mention that the Senate is designed to be unfair like that (because Senators were originally to represent the State, not the populace).  California has 40 million residents and 2 Senators (like every State), and Wyoming has only 565,000 and 2 Senators.  So Wyoming has 80x the influence in the Senate per person as California.  Republicans control most of the lower-population States. 

That is why the Republicans can elect Presidents with a minority of the total vote.  6 of the last 7 Presidential elections have had the majority of voters choosing the Democratic candidate but only 2 Democrats were Presidents.

There were some close calls in some important elections.  Some Democrats who lost came closer than any in a couple decades (see gerrymandering, above) even in places where Trump won in 2016.  Some elections are still in doubt and will be decided in recounts or by yet-uncounted absentee ballots.  And some of the losing Democratic candidates did so well as first-timers that they will surely be more experienced and campaigning next time.

The next couple of years with Trump in office with a Democratic House Of Representatives should be very interesting.

Aside from all that, voter experiences vary by location.  Gerrymandering aside, there are other ways voters can be suppressed.  There are tricks the party in local power can affect things.  The Republicans did their best to make sure the groups of people they expected to vote against them could be discouraged.

In places where they wouldn't get much support, they reduced the voting locations, made them hard to find, even moved them out of cities to where there was no public transportation service, demanded exact name matches on several ID forms (even I have several legal versions of my name because I misspelled my middle name and heaven help you if you have a non-standard english name or a hyphenated one), challenged anyone with a Post Office Box delivery.

In some places, voters stood in line for 6 hours because their voting place "inconveniently" had too few ballots to fill out.  I stood in line for 3 hours once myself.  But here in (Democratic) Maryland, there are voting stations all over the place. 

So I walked into mine Tuesday, went straight to the check-in table (no line), then straight to the ballot reception table (no line), and then to the private voting stall (no line).  I filled out my ballot (paper so that it can be recounted if necessary and hard to hack) and brought it to the scanner (no line).

I was in and out in 10 minutes!  That's how it should be.  And how it could be if SOME PEOPLE (Republicans) weren't actively trying to prevent unfavored people from voting.