Election 2020: Understanding the Wisconsin recount process and its purpose
On November 4, several news organizations called the presidential race in Wisconsin for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. That same day, the campaign of President Donald Trump, who trails Biden by under 21,000 votes, announced it would request a recount. “The President is...
Staying Together: The next challenge for America is to remain United
So here we are after Election Day and the presidential race again remains undecided. For the left, this feels all too familiar, the ghost pains of 2016 throbbing in the hole where our souls used to be. Outcome aside, the fact that this race is even close is a shocking...
Hanging Chads: The national drama and trauma that followed contested elections from 1876 to 2000
By Robert Speel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Erie campus, Penn State As states continue to count their ballots in the 2020 election, it seems possible that Democrats and Republicans will end up in court over whether President Trump will win a second term...
Joe Biden wins Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes thanks to early morning ballot results from Milwaukee
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden narrowly won Wisconsin a day after the election on November 4, a key victory in his pursuit of the White House. President Donald Trump’s campaign promised it would be immediately subject to a recount. Even with Wisconsin, the...
The gruesome truth of who we are: Half of America willingly voted to keep a monster in power
“I am just grief stricken by how many Americans are OK with racist dog whistling and white supremacy and cutesy nods to white nationalism. Even if 45 is gone, that all stays. This is who we are.” A friend, the White mother of a Black child, posted this on Facebook on...
Good vs. Evil: The unsettling discovery that you have been on the wrong side of history all along
By Melanie Green, Professor of Communication, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York Former Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Yet despite their obvious legal disagreements,...
How the Far-Right will continue to threaten the well-being of Americans long after the election
President Trump has made clear his threat to reject the results of an election he loses. Such an eventuality will pose the need for the American people to rally in their millions to remove this malignant authoritarian from office. A broad united front mobilized in...
The one absolute certainty this election season is that the presidential term ends at noon on January 20
By Donald Nieman, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Binghamton University, State University of New York With so much unclear about the upcoming presidential election, it’s nice to know that there is one absolute certainty. Mail-in ballots may...
Someone has to lose: Can a nation of hate swallow the notion of hope?
By Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, IUPUI The American public may not find out who wins the presidential election on November 3, 4, or even 5. But, at some point, we will learn whether Republican Donald Trump is elected to a second term or if Democrat Joe Biden...
A History of Mob Rule: How the presidential election could be decided in the streets
The white mobs did not care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black. They murdered people in public with guns and rocks. They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames. In East St. Louis in July 1917, white vigilantes lynched...
Kidnapped voters and self-printed ballots are why there are laws regulating behavior at polling places
By Kristin Kanthak, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh Author Edgar Allan Poe, the 19th-century master of American macabre, may have died of dirty politics. According to legend, a gang of party “poll hustlers” kidnapped and drugged him....
The White Right: Facebook has become the platform of choice for domestic terrorists
In a year of escalating political violence in the United States, Facebook has served as a key organizing tool for violent extremists. An alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was planned in part on Facebook, with one leader of the scheme...
