The historic election of last week has been sliced and diced in so many ways that there is hardly anything new to digest but here’s an angle that is often ignored. Our behavior in elections gives us a rare opportunity to learn something about ourselves individually and collectively and here in Michigan there were a wealth of “reveals” about our human behavior and conduct.
Here goes. Civic duty is alive and well in this state. They started counting election day noses back in 1948 and the 79% of you who participated in the recent voting set a new record which was helped tremendously by the election reforms you supported several years ago.
To wit: 2.2 million voted via the mail box and not the voting box. Another 1.2 million voted in person but during the early voting period at your local clerk’s office. Then on election day, doing it the old way, 2 million got in line to cast a ballot along with the 22,000 neverbefore- voters who legally registered to vote on the day of the election That produced a raw number of 5.66 million citizens who got in the game. The other question yet to be answered is where the heck were the rest of you? Over 2 million who were registered to vote, ignored all these opportunities to fulfill one of our democracy’s most sacred rituals. Some could argue it will take more than a note from your mom to explain this dereliction of civic duty.
The climate was ripped for some pre and post election disruptions. With the state pretty much divided in half on the presidential race, one side or the other could have acted out. You bet there were a few who did such as the person who put a torch to some absentee return mail boxes and there were a number of death threats aimed at local election officials which is not part of the democracy and is inexcusable but it could have been worse and it wasn’t. Collectively the bulk of the folks channeled their frustrations, anger, angst, and whatever into other non-violent outlets. Take a bow for that.
Some pundits will argue against this next notion but one could make the case that Michigan is no longer a blue or red state, but the dominant color is obviously red as the Republicans galloped from one county to another electing GOP county officials, GOP state legislators and 79 out of 83 counties said yes to Mr. Trump leaving a disgruntled island of nine counties to lick their collective wounds when their candidate, Ms. Harris, won there but lost everywhere else.
Saving you the effort, here they are those “islands” from top to bottom: Marquette, Lealanau, Kent, Kalamazoo, Ingham, Wayne, Oakland, Washtenaw And Genesee counties. And no you can’t leave to form your own state.
We learned that no matter what, some men and women could not tolerate a female in the oval office. One wag suggested, their notion of the Commander and Chief does not include someone wearing a pant suit. We learned racism is alive in many places.
We learned that many voted their own pocketbooks while other altruistic citizens pondered the impact of their vote on others in the society.
We learned that citizens like change and when one candidate fails to represent that, they are likely doomed to lose.
When the GOP took control of the Michigan House by sending four Democratic incumbents to the showers, we learned that many citizens feel the abortion issue has been resolved in this state and there was no need to revisit that at the local house race level. Unfortunately for the Democrats in too many cases that is the theme they hammered home and got hammered on Election Day for doing it.
We also learned on the local government level when it came to millage increases, if voters are convinced their money will not be tossed down the bureaucratic rat hole, they will vote yes. 96% of the library millages passed; 77% of the school issues passed; senior citizen spending was embraced by the majority and 65% of the road projects got the green light. So much for the much ballyhooed tax revolt.
In the days ahead, there will be much more to learn about human behavior starting in the Oval Office and coming right down to the kitchen table in your home. What that is is anybodies guess.
