Vote While You Still Can

A conversation with friend and colleague Charles Madigan about voting.

Charlie: For people who believe in genuine democracy, Tuesday, November 8th is the equivalent of the Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic Church: You must go to Mass. Except mass in this case is a voting precinct station, and your obligation is to wade through all the names on the ballot and pick the winners.

For people who continue to obsess about the outcome of the 2020 election, where Joseph Biden clearly defeated Donald Trump, the message of elections is simple: They are all about mathematics, not much about ideology. The bigger number always wins.

photo by Jose M

That part is not debatable. The part that was so furiously shouted about in 2020, and I fear this time too, is the legitimacy of the process that has evolved to pick the winners. Look at what happened in my own precinct when I voted early last week. I didn’t see any gaping holes in the process in my hometown, Evanston, Illinois. First, the election monitors checked your address and looked at whether you are the person you say you are. Then you signed a sheet that gets compared to the signature you put on paper when you registered, the one on file with the elections people.

Then they gave me a little pass to show to the election monitors, who gave me a little coded card and waved me to any of dozen or so voting booths. I looked down the ballot, voted for my very favorites then pushed a button and my ballot was printed out. That was then scanned and for a reward, I got a sticker that said, “I voted.”

No one is stealing anything here! But what is likely to happen again this time is that the people who lose, particularly the 2020 “Election Deniers,” as they have come to be known, will start shouting that it was stolen from them. That is not true. It was not in 2020 and it is not now.

Is this system perfect? The first big flaw I see is that it lets people sit at home on their backsides if they are too lazy, too angry, too disconnected, to cast a ballot. In this nation of gun toting revolutionary wannabes, it’s hard to imagine a good small “d” democrat sitting at home. But that is what happens.

If you don’t vote, you yield the sacred ground of democracy to those who want to strip you of that right, basically because they disagree with your political thoughts.

What do you think of the situation we face these days, James?

James: You know what we really need in the coming election besides more voters? We need some good losers –candidates who know how to gracefully bow out, learn from defeat and move on. Whatever happened to Americans like William Jennings Bryan? Kaleena Fraga of History First reports that he lost three campaigns for the White House between 1986 and 1908. Did he go off and sulk, whine and fabricate excuses when he lost an election like a certain former president whose name rhymes with chump? No! He bounced back each time, briefly became a Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson and used his considerable skills as a stem-winding speaker to become known as a principled man of the people.

One of the “losers” I hold in high esteem is Adlai Stevenson. He lost uphill political races twice, defeated by a true American hero, President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson accepted his fate gracefully with wit and humor. “I will make a bargain with Republicans,” he later quipped, “if they will stop telling lies about us, we’ll stop telling the truth about them.” Now that’s class. History provides us with many famous people who at one time of another were called “losers” — Steve Jobs, ThomasEdison, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ludwig van Beethoven. Hillary Clinton, who was widely expected to become the first female occupant of the White House, by all accounts, took her defeat hard. But she conceded to a man she didn’t think should be president with class and grace. The list could go on and on. Being referred to as a “loser” must have hurt all of them deeply. But they will be remembered much more for their successes. Backbone, courage, having the guts to stare defeat in the face and move on is what being an American is all about.

Now we face candidates like Kari Lake, a Republican who won’t publicly accept President Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump, running for governor of Arizona and wrapping herself in the flag. She won’t say whether she will concede to her opponent if voters reject her. Unfortunately, she’s only one of many of former President Trump’s hand-picked GOP election deniers. What they are doing is un-American.

So, Charlie, my hope for the midterm elections is that candidates for both parties will accept the will of voters with some honesty and class. Also, I hope everyone qualified to vote shows up at the polls.

Charlie: Those are a handful of great historical references who remind us, James, that we weren’t always this way. I do recall my father saying the most radical thing I have ever heard him say, “Dammit, if the Democrats don’t nominate Kennedy because he’s Catholic…I…I..I’m going to vote Republican!” That would have been the most radical thing he could have done after a lifetime in the United Mine Workers and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen. He was saved, fortunately, from a vote for Richard M. Nixon.

What I am most concerned about is the potential for violence in the wake of what happens Tuesday. And it’s not the Democrats I am worried about. If I were much of a praying man, I would be praying that the Republicans start acting again like Republicans and stand up and support this noble, if sometimes tortured, political process.

James: I think the fear of violence is real, Charlie, but I wonder if political operatives are amplifying the talk of brutality. Do they want to scare people into staying home or turning around if they’re confronted at the polls by a bearded madman from Michigan in a MAGA hat? Don’t let a bully scare you. Go Vote!

—James O’Shea and Charles M. Madigan

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.