Still Counting!

 

        Election day has turned into a season instead. It seems like months ago that my husband and I delivered our absentee ballots in person to an official U.S. Post Office. It was reassuring to know that our ballots were in a secure room waiting to be opened. After being overseas for many past elections, it was satisfying to fill outour ballots and physically drop them off. We voted early and made our voice known. No one can mess with our ballots, or so we thought.

Now its three days after the Election and ballots are still being counted across the nation. Election Day was a school holiday, so we made popcorn and settled in to watch the results on TV. It slowly turned into a bad movie with scenes of long lines of unmasked voters and pickets outside the polls. There were makeshift voting tents in parking lots with long lines of people waiting to vote in our city. Then I saw on the Nightly News piles of absentee ballots sitting in our local Post Office. When will they ever count our ballots? At first, the state said we would get a text message when our votes were counted. It has now been three days with no text messages. To make it worse, our new state of Nevada is a swing state. They didn’t announce any statistics until today. I don’t get it. The workers must be tired from counting votes all night. They need police escorts to their cars because citizens are threatening them outside. People are praying outside the P.O with red baseball hats on. I guess we will have to wait for the final countdown. Nevada says lthey have over 60,000 uncounted absentee ballots that were delivered in person and over 60,000 more in-person ballots to count. They hope to be done six days after the election. Our local election officials announced today that they will call people if there is a problem with a mailed-in ballot. We will never know if our votes were counted. It is very nerve-racking.

We discuss the voting daily with our family by phone. The whole country is on hold now. The President is declaring victory when our votes haven’t even been counted yet. Hold your horses! I still hope that honesty wins. So we wait, eat pizza, and watch old movies. I picture mountains of ballots being counted around the clock in the P.O. The future of our children and grandchildren rely on this election. Breaking news, the President just tweeted to stop counting all ballots. He must be getting nervous.

As the wildfires continue to burn on the West Coast, we send hope to the people whose homes are burning. We send virtual hugs to local families who are hungry and being evicted from their homes. We are thankful that our taxes are providing free breakfasts and lunches to local school children. There is heartache out there and the number of COVID 19 cases has reached a record high. What can we do to help?

We can give a collective hug to those in need and a smile to those on street corners. That is not enough. We need to make changes in the world and make it a better place for our children. I don’t know who will win this presidential election. We will lend our support to those around us and make their day just a little bit better. Reach out to someone with an act of kindness. We need to come together to make the world a better place no matter who wins this presidential election.