Evening Wrap

Let’s start with what we know so far. More than 42 million people have already cast their ballots, significantly more than the 39.1 million who voted early in the 2018 midterms. That doesn’t necessarily mean that overall turnout will be larger — early voting has been on the upswing for years, despite Republicans’ continued attempts to undermine it — but it could portend record participation in states like Georgia, where more residents voted early this year than in any other midterm election.

Let’s start with a hopeful reality check: Amid all the election denial and conspiracy theories and voter intimidation and threats of violence, our election system is — and has always been — secure and trustworthy. It was true in 2016, it was true in 2020, and it’s true now, even if Republicans would prefer that you believe otherwise. If you’re skeptical, try examining the extremely detailed security procedures that govern every step of every election across the country.

Midterm elections typically draw fewer voters than their presidential counterparts. Around 60% of registered voters cast ballots for president, but only 40% participate in off-year contests. There are a lot of reasons for this, but in general, midterm elections are the bridesmaid, never the bride. That could change this year. More than 32 million ballots had been cast in early voting as of Thursday afternoon, which is on pace to match record-breaking turnout in the 2018 midterms. But there are a lot of factors at play, which has made it difficult to forecast turnout with any certainty.

This is typical of the dregs of campaign season, when exhausted staffers and candidates are making their final push to voters after months of … making that exact same push to voters. Absent a late-breaking scandal (that’s a Herschel Walker subtweet), the message doesn’t really change, which means the “last push” is usually just an avalanche of mailers and TV ads that all say the same thing. There’s a reason for the repetition: It works.

Whenever I make an allusion to politics via an introduction about toddlers or bathroom repairs or (bad) food, I’m tempted to explain that it is, in fact, an allusion about politics. But I usually refrain. This is a political newsletter, so you probably get it, and frankly, modern politics very clearly resembles all of those things, for better or worse. (It’s always worse.) Here’s an example: My fun-sized chocolate snacks have left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, similar to the sensation I get from “Don’t Vote” placards that are popping up around Idaho.

Anyone who understands the pain of secondhand embarrassment will shudder at our first tale of the day, in which two GOP candidates in Kansas are tripped up by mortifying gaffes … in their own campaign ads, per the Kansas Reflector. … I realize this may not sound that frightening, so let me put it into perspective for you: As political horror stories go, this is basically “The Shining.”​​

Election officials have lived in the tinderbox for two years, fielding so many death threats and so much vitriol that it’s almost started to seem normal. But it isn’t normal, and the environment right now is particularly charged, the FBI warned earlier this month. There’s no good time for an uptick in extremism, but this one comes at a particularly crucial juncture: Just weeks ahead of an important election, and at a moment when short-staffed offices are also grappling with with voter intimidation tactics, time-consuming records requests from fraud-hunting election deniers and new demands for transparency and accountability.

I’m old enough to remember when it was perfunctory for reporters to ask candidates if they’d accept the results of an election. We’d do it mostly to see how they would react to the idea of losing, or on the extremely off-chance that one of them would say no. Nobody ever did. Our democracy prides itself on the peaceful transition of power; respecting that was an unspoken requirement for would-be lawmakers.

It’s been almost two years since Donald Trump left office, but the aftershocks of his tumultuous one-term presidency continue to reverberate in increasingly stupid ways. Just ask election clerks in Nevada, who are struggling to focus on midterm preparations amid a flood of requests for records related to the 2020 election. The torrent appears to be part of a larger campaign coordinated by Trump supporters across the country in an attempt to further weaken public trust in the election process, per the Nevada Current.

If there was ever any question that political debates are first and foremost a form of political theater (or, as I like to think of it, Theater of the Absurd), then the much-anticipated clash between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Republican-turned-Democrat challenger Charlie Crist on Monday erased all doubts.

In New Hampshire, the towns of Bedford and Hinsdale seem to have little in common. One is a well-off suburb of Manchester, with financial firms to work in and good schools to attend. The other is a small town closer to Vermont than anything and the biggest economic engine is the Walmart. Even getting between the two towns is an ordeal, a 50-mile trek on a winding rural road.

Schools have been in Republicans’ crosshairs since 2020, when they became scapegoats for frustrations over COVID-19 precautions like masks and closures. Since then, educators and schools have become the epicenter of the GOP’s inability to tolerate discussion of Real Things That Exist, including racism, sexism and LGBTQ+ humans. It’s not that schools are the problem, you understand. It’s that they’re easy to blame for the societal changes that certain voters cannot abide.