Election Day: Hit the road, Trump

CNNs+final+electoral+map+for+the+2020+election.

CNN

CNN’s final electoral map for the 2020 election.

This year Election Day felt more like Election Week, and what a week it was. After four long days of counting votes, former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the president-elect.

While I didn’t enjoy the 72 hours spent waiting on states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia to count their votes, I will admit the Tik Toks and memes about it were pretty funny. People on Tik Tok were confused as to why the counting was taking so long.

I started watching the election coverage Tuesday as the votes were just starting to be counted, flipping between CNN and MSNBC. Many of the states that were obviously going one way or another were the first to be colored in on the magic board, my new favorite term for the electoral map.

Wednesday was a happy day because Biden was able to flip Wisconsin and Michigan blue, which rebuilt some of the “Blue Wall,” the term for the swing states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Then, nothing but waiting.

Every night for three days were spent waiting for tranches (CNN’s choice term for chunks) of votes to come in from Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia. They used that word tranche every five seconds for a couple of days. Oddly enough, once other networks started saying it as well, CNN stopped.

Honestly, I didn’t think Georgia was going to be as competitive as it was, I just assumed it would go red like last time, but I was pleasantly surprised at how close it was.

Biden’s leads kept getting smaller in Arizona and Nevada, which was unsettling, but Trump’s leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania were also shrinking. It wasn’t until Friday that Georgia became tied and then Biden went into the lead. In Pennsylvania, Biden pulled into the lead, but nothing was officially called yet.

Amidst all this we didn’t see too much of the president, but he did tweet several times, many of which were flagged by Twitter for “potentially misleading information,” including his tweet “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” which was false.

We all should give a round of applause to people like John King and Steve Kornacki because they basically didn’t get a break for a week. Even when Kornacki wasn’t on the air the “Kornacki Cam” on MSNBC showed him working the whole time. The man didn’t sleep.

By Saturday, I was so tired of election coverage, I just couldn’t watch anymore. The good news was I didn’t have to. Biden was announced president-elect and thousands of people across the country were celebrating. People were celebrating Trump not being president anymore or the first woman and person of color to be vice president, and so much more. I’ve never seen so many people come together to celebrate something all at once; it truly was amazing.

The president has filed all sorts of lawsuits against various states under the claim that there was fraud with the votes. While there was an automatic recount in Georgia because the difference of votes was only a little over 4,000 votes, the lawsuits will most likely not change the outcome of the election.

Trump’s thought process seems to be that the only way he could have lost would be if there was cheating against him. He was telling states he was winning, but with Biden catching up, to stop the ballot counting, and the states where Biden was winning, with Trump catching up, to keep counting. It was completely hypocritical, although not surprising.

With the lawsuits not having an effect on the election all we can do now is wait for Jan. 21, Inauguration Day. Biden Administration here we come.