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Who Really Won The Election? Democracy
Who was the real winner on Tuesday? Democracy.
Overcoming a wave of voter suppression laws, misinformation, long lines, longer lies and Hurricane Sandy, millions of people still had their voices heard and ensured their votes counted.
Many of the voter suppression laws took different forms — voter ID and citizenship requirements, limitations on early voting, restrictions on third-party voter registration, purging, and criminal disfranchisement laws — but their impact and intent are the same: a cynical attempt to push certain constituencies out of the electorate in advance of an election. This is particularly true for voters of color, students, voters with disabilities and the elderly.
In the end, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, along with other civil rights groups, and the Department of Justice, were able to stop, limit, or postpone the implementation of many of the laws, in critical states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and South Carolina. The people also fought back: in Minnesota, where voters soundly rejected the state’s voter ID ballot initiative.
Still, attempts to restrict voting rights still led to confusion at the polls. On Tuesday, I was working at the command center of the nonpartisan volunteer coalition Election Protection, and our hotline received more than 88,600 calls from voters reporting concerns involving long lines, inappropriate use of provisional ballots, broken machines, and poorly and wrongfully trained poll workers, among other concerns.
For example, extremely long lines were reported in states like Florida, Virginia and Ohio. In Miami-Dade County, Florida, voters waited for well over four hours past the 7 p.m. closing time, even after networks began to project a win for President Obama. Just before Election Day, a judge extended early voting in Florida to accommodate the huge numbers of early voters, some of whom waited more than seven hours to cast a ballot.
