The public servants spread throughout the country did what they had sworn an oath to do.
While some of these local legislators and judges and attorneys are known widely, most of them are not. They may have great political ambition that will take them beyond their state, but on Monday, when the electoral college met, they had only care for this fragile democracy.
They went through all the bureaucratic steps of being electors in our confounding voting system. They signed all their paperwork and dropped their ballots into boxes or handed them over to counters. They chatted among themselves during the frequent lulls at state capitols around the country. But when it was all done, President-elect Joe Biden received his 306 electoral votes and President Donald Trump was given his 232.
It was boring. And it was beautiful.
It all unfolded after a weekend of violence in the nation’s capital, during which Trump-supporting Proud Boys, with their misogyny and racism, roamed the city, ravenous for a fight. The electors did their work despite threats of violence over the process. They did their work as so many Republicans in Washington, from the White House to Congress, tried to invalidate this election because the results made them unhappy and their happiness was pinned on retaining power at any cost even if all they seem to do with that power — at least in these past few months — is nothing.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Every chapter in this election has been fraught, but watching the electors was a gorgeous snooze. They did their job with little fanfare and without raised voices. No one was screaming or acting out. Legislators weren’t jabbing their fingers at one another.
At the Michigan Capitol, that Midwestern hotbed of gun-toting outrage, it was so quiet as the electors filled out their paperwork that one could hear the sound of pen being put to paper.
Michigan wasn’t the last state whose electors voted Monday evening, but it was the final of the contentious six — the states where Trump had filed nonsensical lawsuits, demanded recounts upon recounts, and thrown whatever muck he could find against local representatives in hopes that he could sully someone’s integrity in one of the myriad ways in which his own has been wrecked.
But Michigan cast its 16 votes for Biden and did so without incident. And what should have elicited little more than a shrug instead made one sigh in relief. It was a reason to applaud. And the electors did. It was one of the many moments of reassurance, repeated again and again, that led Biden to tease an evening speech by emphasizing what once was obvious: “In America, politicians don’t take power — the people grant it to them.”
The voting was almost all live-streamed. And by late afternoon, one felt it was possible to turn away from the feed because the process was unfolding without drama, which was frankly quite stunning.
“We made it,” Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, said after the state’s vote was tallied. His was no understatement considering the state’s Supreme Court had just ruled against Trump in one of his last-ditch efforts to invalidate the election.
The Wisconsin electors sat socially distanced at the Capitol, as captured on a live stream from WisEye.org, which at one point simply showed folks sitting in silence. And frankly, it was a wonderful sight to behold: people being patient. Evers quickly announced that Biden won the state’s 10 electoral votes. With little action beyond waiting to sign documents, the electors whiled away the minutes musing on the origins of the term “college,” which one of the dedicated citizens explained refers to a group of people associated by a common pursuit.
In Pennsylvania, the electors approached socially distanced tables to cast their vote, with each of them wearing matching face masks bearing the state’s coat of arms. In addition to adhering to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the uniform masks added a sense of order and sobriety to proceedings that had been bruised and battered by chaos and falsehoods unleashed in Pennsylvania court by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and his motley crew.
In Georgia, activist Stacey Abrams called on the state’s electors one by one as they cast their votes for Biden. Dressed in unremarkable gray, she stood at the lectern as she oversaw a monumental feat: the first time a Democratic presidential nominee had won the state of Georgia in almost 30 years. And when it was done, there was applause.
There was applause in Pennsylvania, too. In Michigan, there was a standing ovation. The adulation wasn’t so much for the victors. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have already received their cheers and praise. This was for the public servants. They withstood the worst that our nation could hurl at them — and still, they got the job done.