Election Day Diary 2024

5 November, 2024. 2,664 words.

The difficulty of writing about the most important election in American history (not to be confused with the previous elections of the same name) is maintaining some amount of detachment so that people can read it without triggering violent emotional responses.

To be honest, I’m writing more for an international audience here, because nobody in the United States is going to click on an election post where the title isn’t screaming some partisan diatribe.

Background Data

The basic facts are these (based on 270towin.com, which is only one of many such prediction sites, but I find it has the best UI): Polling and history indicates that the outcome of all but six or seven states can be predicted fairly easily.

The so-called “battleground” or “swing” or “toss-up” states in 2024 are, in order of increasing electoral college votes: Nevada (6), Wisconsin (10), Arizona (11), Michigan (15), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), and Pennsylvania (19), for a total of 81 92 votes.

Incidentally, I noticed just this morning that 270towin.com has changed Arizona from a toss-up to a likely Republican state.

If all the other states vote as predicted, and Arizona goes Republican, Harris gets 226 electoral college votes and Trump gets 230 electoral college votes. 270 votes are required to win the presidency. There are many statistical permutations that go either way, but I think the simplest way to put it is that whoever wins Pennsylvania is probably going to win the presidency.

Personally, I’m preparing for Trump to win. All the signs I’ve seen are pointing to it. (But then, I expected him to win in 2020, too.) I’m hearing it’s nearly inevitable that Republicans win the Senate, and there’s a 50/50 chance Republicans also win the House. It could very well be a clean sweep for Republicans so they’ll have absolute carte blanche, and the Supreme Court, for the next two years.

However, it could also be the exact opposite. I’ve seen very few predictions that sound confident.

Not counting anything like legal challenges, disasters, or insurrections, of course, which I assume we’re all adult enough to realize are distinct possibilities. Today isn’t the end of the election, it’s the beginning.

Starting My Day

I live in Virginia, which is a reasonably safe Harris state. Virginia flipped from a safe Republican state to a leaning Democratic state somewhere around the Obama years, thanks largely to the densely populated Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads areas.

Still, I’m planning to schlep my way to the polling station today. It’s less than a five minute drive from my house, in an elementary school.

I’m anti-social and hate going out and hate talking to strangers, but I can’t bring myself to do the mail-in voting thing (it’s called absentee voting in my state). It’s much more satisfying to fill in the bubbles and feed my ballot into the scanning machine myself.

This year, my company has actually given U.S. employees the day off to vote. This has never happened to me before. We all agreed that it would have been better to get the day after the election off.

My outdoor cat–whom I have given many names, including Yellow Stray Cat, Little Buddy, then Buddy when he grew bigger, Marbles, because he looks like a marble cake, and sometimes even Mr. Tangiers Foxface Whitesocks–has been particularly hungry this morning. What does this portend?

My biggest decision on voting day is whether to take a shower before going out or not. I’ve known how I was going to vote for quite literally years.

There are other things on my ballot besides the presidency, though. Also at stake are the House and Senate. I’m voting for one (of the two) Virginia Senator seats and one House representative for my congressional district. I think both of them are fairly safe Democratic wins.

There is also a state constitution amendment proposal on the ballot. It’s fairly banal and relates to benefits for spouses of veterans.

With the outcome for my state and my district in particular being fairly predictable, it’s tempting to go down the “my vote doesn’t matter” route. Mathematically and statistically, it definitely doesn’t.

Still, it hasn’t occurred to me to skip the election. There are very few ways for an average citizen to “participate” in the ongoing history of the country they live in. The main three, in my opinion, are: Joining the military, sitting on jury duty, or voting. Voting is definitely the easiest one to do. (I suppose a fourth way is running for office, but in these troubled times, that feels more like it would be contributing to the downfall of the country than anything else.)

10:22 AM

Scrolling through my cable television guide looking for a news channel, I see that the movie Civil War is playing on demand today. Hilarious.

10:24 AM

There aren’t any cable news channels left in the United States that aren’t partisan mouthpieces. The likes of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX are just doing interviews with surrogates all day and pretending it’s journalism.

I’m planning to watch BBC’s coverage of election returns tonight, because I consistently find it to the most humorous. I love how they’ve adopted all the American election night tropes like the big touchscreen maps and all that stuff, but they don’t quite understand what all the counties and states mean. They always talk about American politics with a slightly incredulous slant.

Anyway, I find it far more engaging to see election coverage from an outsider perspective.

I’d probably keep three or four screens going simultaneously if I could: BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. I’d hate to miss any crucial projections. Part of the fun of election night is seeing which network is first with their projections. They really care about that stuff behind-the-scenes.

10:35 AM

I had a moment of panic when I suddenly remembered that my driver’s license is expiring soon, and I was absolutely convinced it had expired on my birthday last month and I wouldn’t be able to vote today. Turns out, it expires next year.

11:08 AM

It is done. When I have a choice, I usually vote mid-morning, because there usually aren’t any lines. Before and after work are when you have to wait.

The process works like this. Future generations can decide if this seems free and fair or not, but it’s been largely unchanged for me during the course of my life. (The biggest change I’ve seen is having to present a driver’s license instead of a voter ID card, which happened some 10 years ago in my state.)

I found a parking spot and entered the elementary school. Two local precincts vote at this school, so I had to go in the room for my precinct, which was mostly empty. Two election workers were at the first table, one was occupied with a voter, so the second worker helped me.

For the last several years, I’ve had to state my full name and address after I handed over my license before they’d let me vote. This year, I just handed the person my license, they put it in a machine, there were some beeps and boops, and they gave me a receipt. I glanced at it to verify it looked like my information.

I took the receipt to the next table where there were two more election workers. I handed my receipt to one worker, and the second one handed me a scantron ballot.

I turned around and went to one of the little voting stations lined up against the wall, which is a flimsy table with some plastic walls on three sides for privacy. There was a pen there. I had four things to vote for: President, Senate, Congress, and a state constitution amendment. I filled in four bubbles and put the pen back.

I walked over to the scanning machine at the end of the room, where there were two more election workers. I fed my ballot into the scanner. Usually I put it in face down, but this year I went wild and fed it in face up. I ask every year and they assure me it doesn’t matter which way you put it in. Anyway I got a positive result from the machine.

One of the election workers handed me an “I voted” sticker and I returned to my car, where I found that I’d actually gotten two stickers instead of one. A banner year indeed. Then I drove home, a drive of some 3-4 minutes.

On television, you almost always see the voting centers in big cities where they have to deal with thousands and millions of people, where lines stretch around the block and hundreds of election workers run everywhere in a panic. My precinct is tiny by comparison, and looks nothing like that. I counted a total of six election workers in the room where I voted.

Now, there’s nothing for me to do in this election except sit back and watch the news for any horrible tragedies that might unfold throughout the rest of the day in some far flung corner of the country that I’ve never seen or heard of before.

Incidentally, I did take a shower before going to vote.

P.S. There were four third-party presidential candidates on the ballot, more than I can ever remember seeing before in Virginia: Jill Stein (Green), Chase Oliver (Libertarian), Claudia De la Cruz (Independent), and Cornel West (Independent). I’ve heard exactly nothing from or about any of their campaigns in the last four years.

2:44 PM

I was going to go to the store after I voted, but instead I came home and took a short nap after lunch. Then I went to the store and got stuff to make chilli. And some potato chips. And some ho-hos. Pretty awful food guaranteed to shave time off of one’s life expectancy, but it’s a special occasion.

CNN is reporting one Pennsylvania county is extending polling hours because of delays from improperly printed ballots (see also here). In the before times, that kind of thing happened all the time, all across the country, in every election, but nobody ever heard about it or knew anything about it except those of us in the local state political blogospheres. Now, it leads the news.

Every channel is showing video of long lines of hundreds of people waiting to vote. Not in my America. I just walked in and walked out, no waiting.

3:34 PM

I’m starting to think it might be too late to make chilli for tonight, since “tonight” is now less than four hours away. Polls begin closing on the east coast at 7 PM. CNN, however, is starting their Election Night Coverage at 4 PM, like it’s a Superbowl or something. Exit polling is expected at 5 PM, giving them a full two hours to chatter about whether the exit polling means anything or not.

Also, I forgot to mention that CNN is also reporting bomb threats were called into a few Georgia polling places that were apparently Russian in origin, according to the FBI. Subtle spycraft.

By the way, another reason I like to vote in person on election day is that it’s kind of nice to spend just a few minutes out in the real world and see that almost everyone is, in fact, helpful and polite and smiling and laughing, even on the most divisive day in the country. It’s a minor antidote to the one-sided perspective of the world you get from scrolling through social media or watching television.

3:45 PM

Okay I’m embarking on a quest to make some chilli anyway. I’m listening to the Glass Cannon Legacy of the Ancients actual play podcast.

4:27 PM

Nevermind, I’m listening to CNN’s election coverage. Not that I particularly want to, but I can stream it on the laptop via. Max and carry my USB speaker around with me to listen to it as I’m wandering all over the house making chilli.

5:20 PM

I’ve got CNN streaming on the laptop, and I’ve got BBC streaming on my gaming PC. The chilli is finished, but I’m probably going to get hungry long before it’s finished cooking. (I’m using a crock pot.) Luckily I bought tons of junk food at the store today.

What I find disturbing about the BBC coverage so far is that they have a dude with an American accent talking. But the official coverage doesn’t start until 5:40 PM my time. Aw man, it looks like Katty Kay isn’t at the BBC anymore. Disappointing.

CNN is probably going to get booted, because they do that stupid thing where they try to have all sides represented, which just ends up with people yelling at each other during the commentary segments. I’ve heard that political junkies really love that stuff, but I’m in it more for the data.

5:53 PM

Katty Kay is on BBC! As a special correspondent in the studio instead of an anchor. I don’t know what the U.K. thinks of Katty Kay but I see her fairly often on U.S. television covering politics.

I’ve now got BBC (which luckily doesn’t require VPN) and CNN streaming on my gaming PC, and I’m waiting until 7 PM for C-SPAN’s stream to start, which alleges to be free of punditry. Unfortunately I don’t see any easy way to switch between tabs in a way that plays the audio for only the active tab. Ah well.

I guess I’ll go ahead and post this because the results of the election are irrelevant to the topic of this missive. As of this writing, it’s a tie at 3 for Harris and 3 for Trump (blame New Hampshire for that).

Good luck everyone.

UPDATES

8:25 PM

Virginia seems to be counting votes slower than I remember. Only 87/133 localities reporting at 8:30 and no projections yet. Virginia usually has pretty good data processing on election night. I think they were one of the first states to have a decent election web site.

8:43 PM

90/133 now. Seems like a worrying sign for Harris fans. Why is the counting so slow? I’m sure Virginia was called for Biden way before this. The good news is that the big population centers will be last, and that’s where Harris will “run up the numbers,” to quote CNN’s John King.

9:15 PM

104/133 counted in Virginia, and Harris is only up one point. Clinton won by five points and Biden won by ten points. There needs to be a lot of votes left in Northern Virginia/Hampton Roads/Richmond areas or this is a terrible sign for Harris.

10:58 PM

Too tired to stay up any more. No projections in Virginia or any of the swing states. Virginia looks like Harris will win but by less than 2020. Sounds like John King is starting to see Harris underperforming compared to 2020, which is a big problem. Not expecting anyone to concede before the morning though.

11:29 PM

Well I’m still up. I’ve seen enough now that I’d be shocked if Harris wins this. The only real question now is whether Democrats can win the House.

11:43 PM

CNN called North Carolina for Trump, the first of the swing states to get a projection. Pundits on CNN are saying “this feels more like 2016 than 2020.” Meaning that time Trump won the “blue wall” states and won the presidency.

11:47 PM

AP apparently called Virginia for Harris at 11:42 PM. Looks like she’s going to win by 3-4 points, which is less than Clinton in 2016.

8:22 AM

Waking up to the unsurprising news that Trump has been declared the winner and Republicans will hold the Senate. However, the House is still up in the air.

I, for one, had a ho-ho for breakfast.

P.S. Just for the record, I left the chilli cooking in the crock pot overnight.

P.P.S. Looking back I was definitely wrong about one thing… the election isn’t just starting, it’s over.