Talk with the Colby Democrats and Colby Republicans: 2020 election

In a year plagued by a pandemic, economic volatility, and social unrest in response to racial injustice, it is safe to say that 2020 has been  a year marked by uncertainty. Capping off thus uncertainty was a U.S. presidential election where practically every issue under the sun was at stake — everything from COVID-19 to the economy to systemic and institutional racism. 

Recently, The Colby Echo interviewed leaders of the Colby Democrats and the Colby Republicans to gauge their response to what might have been the most contentious election of a lifetime. 

Jake Nash `21, who serves on the leadership team of Colby Democrats, worked at the polls all day on election day, helping to guide traffic in the parking lot outside Waterville City Hall. He noted the unique impact COVID-19 had on the election in Waterville.

“First it was a hassle for the city clerk to find a new polling place and set it up to be COVID[-19] safe, but the traffic was a lot smaller than we expected, so we were able to keep people inside in line instead of outside and there weren’t huge delays in Waterville anyway,” Nash said.

Nash also had insight into the ballot counting delays that resulted from the pandemic.

“A lot of state election laws don’t fit very well with huge amounts of mail-in voting, like requirements that you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can start tallying them, so that definitely contributed to the delays,” Nash said, “but I think in broader terms it sort of helped Trump with his narrative of the election being stolen by the way that the ballots are being counted and leaning Democrat  ... It makes it seem like he was winning, but at the last minute it’s being taken away from him even though those ballots were all cast before or on election day. So, it’s not something people didn’t see coming, but it’s certainly a new thing with COVID[-19].” 

The Colby Republicans affirmed the importance of counting every vote.

“The delay in results negatively impacted the productivity of the country last week, acting as a distraction particularly from the record numbers of COVID-19 cases we have been experiencing,” the club said. “We were all hoping for a certain outcome in a reasonable amount of time, but it’s ultimately most important that every vote gets counted, and with the astounding turnout in this election, particularly through mail-in voting, it’s not surprising that we waited so long for the official results.”

Overall, the 2020 presidential election has only magnified political polarization in the United States. As politics become increasingly tied to identity, the saying that “the political is now personal” resonates more than ever for many Americans, including the student body at Colby. 

Nash reflected on whether this rift constituted an irreversible division in the U.S.

“I don’t know about irreparably divided, but, I mean, the fact that it was this close means that we are very divided,” Nash said. “I think a lot of people were looking for a landslide Biden victory and we didn’t get it, and that kind of underscores how many people still agree with his policies or even just his cult of personality.” 

The Colby Republicans shared similar thoughts on the severity of divisiveness in the nation, but they also commented on ways they believed this divisiveness could be overcome. 

“Regardless of the outcome of this election, our country is and will continue to be extremely polarized,” the club remarked. “Attacking others for views that differ from one’s own should not be the norm and is not conducive to change. Calling people or ideas racist or any other derogatory term will not make them go away. And the people who hold the beliefs that are repeatedly dismissed will only grow stronger in those beliefs, escalating the animosity between dissenting groups with no chance of the reconciliation necessary to better this country. It’s on all of us to try to understand each other and to work through our differences in a respectful manner.”

As of now, Biden has been declared president-elect by the Associated Press, and although that is certainly a monumental victory for Democrats, the Trump campaign has continued to give few signs of backing down, so it seems that tension surrounding the election is far from being resolved.

~Hae-Jung Kim `24