Beyond the Ballot

It’s been an incredibly intense election season, and just about the only thing that coud make it any weirder would be if a week before the election the seas were to rise and start swallowing polling places. There were of course much more serious impacts of Hurricane Sandy, but that was one of them.

Future scholars and pundits will debate whether the storm and its coverage stalled Mitt Romney’s momentum or made Barack Obama look presidential, or distracted voters from political messages and left some too overwhelmed to get to the polls.

My one prediction is that we’ll discover tomorrow that the American election system is sturdier than many expect. Despite battles over voter ID, ballot security operations, and yes, a natural disaster, most people who want to vote will get to, and those votes will be honestly and accurately counted.