Every election, I make an election whiteboard, containing all of my local races, key national races, elections that affect my friends, and races that I just happen to find interesting. This year, I thought I’d share it here.
It can be called an infogram. Or, an “infokilogram”, as a friend told me earlier today.
I make this kilogram every two years not to waste marker ink (though I’m also successful at that), but rather to calm myself. To remind myself that there are a lot of things getting decided tomorrow, on many axes. On the board there are 77 unique elections with 160 viable candidates, along with 91 state and local ballot initiatives, a handful of US territory contests, and hundreds more tracked with markers for who is controlling state legislative seats and mayoralties.
If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot, and I mean a lot, of time, stressing over the election in the top left. Harris vs. Trump. And I’m not trying to say that election doesn’t matter; it absolutely does. But I promise you that no matter what three-digit number replaces the blue 0 up there in a few days, the true state of the country will be more complex.
Ten states will vote on enshrining the right to choose. Six will vote on some flavor of ranked-choice voting, and another three on jungle primaries. There are initiatives on drug legalization, state flags, unions, gerrymandering, and more. Local judges will get elected. Young aspiring politicians will get seats in their state house for the first time.
No matter what happens in the electoral college.
An election is simply a snapshot of where we are currently at as a nation. It is not an endpoint. There will be results tracked on this board that engender immense, and there will be others that inspire fury. That is the nature of living in a huge country where people believe extremely different things from each other.
And in the center of all of that joy, rage, excitement and misery should rest the conviction that next week, life will continue. And the struggle to make things better will too.
As it always should.
-RC 😊❤️
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