The Longest Election: Starting a look back at the 2020 election

Maybe it was done to generate interest -- and, not coincedentally, to divert attention from the seemingly certain Democratic nominee. Maybe it was done because they had no clear frontrunner (though many alleged movers and shakers were supposedly pining for Jeb Bush). Whatever the reason, in 2016, the Republican Party sought their presidential nominee using a reality TV format -- their own version of Survivor, The Real World, or I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here -- with roughly 25 Republican hopefuls.

Or roughly 24 Republicans and billionaire reality TV host Donald Trump.

The Republicans and, ultimately, the nation as a whole were shocked -- shocked -- when the reality TV host emerged from this hokey process as the nominee.

Still, the concept might have been retired, unmourned, but for the unexpected outcome (unexpected by any pollsters or pundits) of the 2016 election. It is apparently a fundamental law of American politics that, if a tactic works for THEM, no matter how stupid or far-fetched, it will be copied by US.

Maybe that's unfair to politicians. It works that way in other industries, too. Does anybody get a big-budget movie greenlighted these days without a comic book superhero angle? Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also the best defense against ever having to have an independent thought.

Thus it was that the 2020 election started before workers could remove that unshatterred glass ceiling from the hotel ballroom. And, sadly, history will affirm that many Democratic Party leaders first responded to Trump's victory by casting about for their own billionaire TV host to run against Trump in 2020.

When Oprah turned them down, the Democrats came up with their own reality TV format -- not just an island, but a two-island mini-archipelago, with something like 50 wannabes, many of whom were known to others beyond their immediate families. One island was like the kids' table at a holiday gathering, with obscure contestants vying for the chance to move up to the grownup table, from which the eventual nominee would emerge. Contestants could be voted off the islands entirely, or demoted to the kiddie table, apparently on the basis of responses to the breathless emails that clogged our inboxes every morning. (Who won last night's debate? Vote now!) I'm only surprised there wasn't an 800-number flashing throughout each nightly program.

There's no guarantee that the reality TV format will be abandoned four years hence. Indeed, I'm seriously afraid that, in 2024, one or both parties may add a panel of party elders to help eager contestants craft their messages to the American people. (Congratulations! You're on Team Bernie!) The Republic might survive that... as long as the parties don't make the candidates wear costumes.

The onset of the Pandemic also contributed to the seeming length of this election season.

But it wasn't just the fact that we were stuck at home, seeking affirmation of our increasingly strident views from our like-thinking friends on Facebook, or performing pathetic dances on Tik Tok as the economy crumbled about us -- this election season really was longer than its recent predecessors, and on both ends.

Early voting started earlier than ever -- and, of course, the unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots guaranteed that it would take far longer than usual to figure out who won. Indeed, you won't have to drive too far beyond the Chicago suburbs before you encounter some seemingly solid citizens who are not entirely sure that the national election is over even now.

But the 2020 election is over, even though, in a few local cases, discovery recounts and related court challenges will continue a while longer. So it's time to start looking back, and see what really happened and, potentially, use that hard-won knowledge to begin preparing for 2022.

By which time, hopefully, our two-week shutdown will finally be over....

Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers at this point. Among these:

• Despite being bombarded with incessant messages about the necessity and virtue of voting, and despite a myriad of options for accomplishing this civic duty, roughly three out of 10 of our neighbors still did not bother to vote. Why?


• Mail-in ballots unquestionably skewed strongly Democratic. But were they uniformly distributed among the population, or were there concentrated pockets of mail-in participation? If so, where?


• Do any identifiable pockets of mail-in voters in Cook County correspond with nationwide patterns? Were there nationwide patterns?


• Did local mail-in voters linger longer over their ballots, giving more attention to the down-ballot questions -- the judicial retention ballot, for example?

Definitive answers to some of these questions may be impossible to ascertain. But the next essay in this series, a guest post by Dr. Albert J. Klumpp, will suggest possible answers to one or more of these. And -- SPOILER ALERT -- Dr. Klumpp will thoroughly refute my unsupported perception that voters were more hositle toward retention judges this year than in recent elections. Stay tuned.