Voting by the numbers

We still don’t know, and that’s OK

It’s Thursday morning, nearly 36 hours after all polls closed Tuesday night, and the United States is still picking its president for 2021-2025.

And that’s just fine.

Because of the pandemic, and because the U.S. Postal Service lost track of — not lost, just not tracked — about 300,000 ballots, we may not know until the end of the week or even next week whom we expect to lead the U.S. for the next four years, President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joseph Biden. Trump’s attorneys have filed lawsuits in various states to either stop counting votes where he’s ahead or continue to count votes where he’s behind.

However this turns out, the world is watching. And it’s alternately horrified and fearful of how U.S. citizens will react when a final result is clear.

America’s voting history in the past twenty years

With the rise of absentee and early voting in 2020, you may be wondering what the United States’ voter trends have been in recent history. Here’s a comparison of numbers in recent years, according to the United States Election Project:

2020 Election:

Early voters: 100,978,567

Voting eligible population: 239,247,182

2016 Election:

Total voters: 138,846,571

Percentage of voting population: 60.1%

2012 Election:

Total voters: 130,292,355

Percentage of voting population: 58.6%

2008 Election:

Total voters: 132,609,063

Percentage of voting population: 62.2%

2004 Election:

Total voters: 123,535,883

Percentage of voting population: 60.7%

2000 Election:

Total voters: 107,390,107

Percentage of voting population: 55.3%

There are a few things we can gather from this data. First, the number of early voters in 2020 makes up over 42% of the voting population in America. Comparing this to recent years, this puts early votes around 16-20% away from past total voting percentages. That is a lot of people!

In 2020, there’s been a strong endorsement of voting by average citizens, celebrities and elected officials. When we compare the voting numbers as they stand today, it appears that more people are voting (or at least, voting early) than in recent years.

The highest election turnout in history was the 1876 election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, with an eligible voter turnout rate of 82.6% (however, it is important to note this vote excludes pretty much anyone who was not a white male). The highest voter rate in the last 100 years was the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, with a 63.8% voter turnout.

The moral of the story is, voting is important. Exercising our civil rights are important. Even though we are just now getting through an election cycle, look forward to the next four years when you, too, will be able to exercise your right to vote.

Representational firsts in 2020 U.S. election

House and Senate elect LGBTQ+ representatives

As election results pour in Tuesday and Wednesday, America is paying close attention to two specific candidates that will be representing their states in the House and Senate until the next electoral term. Mauree Turner, new House representative from Oklahoma, will be the first Muslim lawmaker in Oklahoma history and first non-binary state legislator in American history.

The 27-year-old ran her campaign oriented toward the issues of her representative district, including incarceration rates and minimum wage concerns.

In response to her win, Turner said, “We are no longer fighting for a seat at the table. We’re creating a whole new table where everybody eats.”

Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender state senator in United States history. The election makes her the highest ranking transgender official in the country. She also serves as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign.

McBride remains the only transgender official elected to the Senate, but there are five openly transgender persons serving in Congress.

Ritchie Torres won the seat to represent the South Bronx in New York City. He will be the first black and gay Congressman in the U.S.

Q&S charter school breaks national news

Dupont Manual’s coverage of Kentucky State Police training scoops national news organizations

The Quill and Scroll chapter at Dupont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky published a major story late last month titled, “KSP training slideshow quotes Hitler, advocates ‘ruthless’ violence,” about the use of quotes from Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in a Kentucky State Police training presentation until 2013.

The information in question was obtained by an attorney during the discovery phase of a lawsuit and then shared the information with journalists representing Dupont Manual’s “Manual Redeye.”

The presentation includes quotes from Adolf Hitler’s fascist manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” and links to a Goodreads article on Adolf Hitler that provides further reading and quotes by Hitler. Hitler was quoted on three other slides, making him the most quoted man in the presentation, according to guest “Manual Redeye” writers Satchel Walton and Cooper Walton.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee is also quoted in the presentation.

Quite simply, the U.S. fought and won two bloody wars to end the fascist, white supremacist Nazi threat in Europe and to quell the traitorous secession by slave states in the South who feared they’d lose their ability to maintain legal slavery. Using Hitler and Lee in a training for state employees is highly dubious, at best, and flagrantly racist at worst.

The contents of the presentation comes to light in a time of heavy discussions of systemic racism as well as uproar of the shooting of Breonna Taylor by the Louisville Metro Police Department in March.

“Manual Redeye’s” article received statewide attention and response from the Kentucky state governor, the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, Kentucky’s 3rd Congressional District and the Kentucky State Police Department. The article is a fantastic representation of scholastic investigative journalism, especially when contemplating the timeliness of the article.

Not only was the article widely circulated in Kentucky, “The New York Times” also picked up the story and distributed the information to a wide audience.

Here at Quill and Scroll, we advocate for spaces where high school journalists can push their achievements past the assumed level of high school journalistic work. The “Manual Redeye” demonstrated their commitment to truth, leadership, integrity and initiative, four of our founding principles, in pursuing this story and informing the general public of problems that were present within the Kentucky safety system that were previously unknown. What a fantastic representation of the impact high school journalism can have on the lives of those surrounding an issue.

While you may not feel like you have a groundbreaking story, you do have important things to say. Reach for those stories that are outside of your comfort zone: journalism is about serving the public.

It is scary to push the envelope. But the reward can be found in the lines of the story.