Kate Rubins is the only American voter not currently on Earth, but she did not let that fact stop her from voting in this year’s election. Rubins is an astronaut currently spending six months on the International Space Station two hundred miles above our planet. However, she is also a registered voter in Houston, Texas, where NASA is based.
So, the Harris County Clerk’s office uploaded a secure electronic ballot to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center. Rubins, using specific credentials, accessed her ballot and cast her vote, which was delivered back to the county clerk’s office by email.
There have been years when an astronaut voting from space would be one of the most unusual stories in an election.
In 2020, it’s not even close.
The Associated Press is calling the November 3 contest “the most consequential US presidential election in living memory.” As of this writing, the election remains undecided as absentee ballots are being counted in key battleground states.
A YouGov poll of 1,999 registered voters found that nearly half—47 percent—disagree with the claim that the election “is likely to be fair and honest.” Slightly more than half—51 percent—believe we won’t “generally agree on who is the legitimately elected president of the United States.” A different YouGov poll found that 56 percent of voters expect to see “an increase in violence as a result of the election.”
As another indication of fears over security threats, gun purchases are breaking all-time records this year.
Why the 2020 election has been so divisive
A week before the election, at least 66.6 million people had voted nationwide, breaking the record for all votes cast before Election Day and 48 percent of the total voting in 2016. Voters cast ballots in a one-room schoolhouse in Iowa, a water department laboratory in Philadelphia, and a bowling alley, a laundromat, and a billiards hall in Chicago.
A ninety-four-year-old woman traveled more than three hundred miles each way to vote. A man in New York City who grew up in the Palestinian territories founded a nonprofit organization to serve more than fifty thousand free meals to people standing in line to vote on November 3.
However, sentiment leading up to the election was not all positive by any means. One American wrote an article titled, “I Bought a Gun Because I’m Terrified of What Will Happen After Election Day.” Predictions of our democracy’s demise have been echoing on both sides of the partisan divide.
Why has the 2020 election been especially vitriolic?
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Jim Denison
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