Did My Vote Really Matter? A First-Hand Perspective of the 2020 U.S. Election
Rory Sullivan, External Affairs
November 27, 2020
When asked why they don’t vote, the typical response from people is usually “Why vote? My vote won’t matter anyway.” Personally, I have been looking forward to voting for as long as I can remember. Being able to cast a ballot in such influential events, especially when the ability to vote is such a privilege, is something I have always wanted to do. When the 2019 Canadian federal election came around, I was a little over a month shy of my 18th birthday, so I didn’t have the chance to cast my vote. However, as a child of an American mother from Texas, I was eligible to vote in the 2020 Presidential election, which might be the most publicized and talked-about American election in history, and I wasn't going to take that responsibility lightly. Unfortunately, the process of voting abroad was much more complicated than I had anticipated, and it makes me wonder: did my vote really matter in the end?
My U.S. voting experience began in September when I finally got confirmation that I was eligible to register to vote. Trying to find information online was extremely frustrating; the national voting website directed me to my state website, which gave me vague information and instructions to call my state office. Then came the easy part: registration. Fortunately, this process was easy: a quick form and then you send it straight back to your county clerk’s office, which in my case was Travis County. Two days later I received my ballot package, and this is where the real trouble began.
The ballot and the accompanying forms were easy enough to fill out, but instructions on how to actually send the ballot were extremely confusing and frustrating. If I were living in the U.S. and had requested a mail-in ballot, I would have received a ballot and envelope in the mail to fill out and then send back. Since I was living in Canada, I had to print out my ballot and envelope myself, meaning that the process of sending in a mail-in ballot was different. Here are the instructions that I was given, and keep in mind that if there is any mistake with how you sent in your ballot, your ballot can be considered ineligible:
Put your completed ballot into a plain envelope.
Glue the Carrier Envelope (the envelope I had to print) onto the sealed plain envelope.
Put that envelope, which is now sealed into the Carrier Envelope, into another envelope, which will be sent to the Country Clerk’s office.
The actual wording of the instructions was a lot more confusing, which is why both my mother and I had to separately contact the county’s office in order to confirm that what we were doing was actually correct. After I received confirmation that my understanding of the instructions was accurate, I had this dreading feeling that I was still doing it wrong. Surprisingly, there was no information online about people who were having the same issues as me - almost all of the information I could find about voting through mail-in ballots was for those living in the U.S., and my attempts to find validation online failed. So, I sent in my ballot about a week after I received my ballot information, hoping for the best.
Then, about a month later, I saw a news article that caught my eye. The headline? “Travis County admits 13,600 mail-in ballot errors, asks some to vote again”. Apparently, there were two errors on the ballots: one had to do with providing voters in some districts with the wrong instructions and the second was that the ballots were allocated to the wrong district. Though these errors, fortunately, did not affect my ballot, it was enough to make me worry about whether my ballot actually made it to the clerk’s office, and whether it would be counted if it arrived. The County of Travis has a database where you can check your voter registration and the status of your ballot if you voted by mail, so the next logical move was for me to check my status. Then I ran into yet another problem: for some reason, I was not a registered voter in the database. At this point, I was convinced that my ballot had somehow either been lost in the mail or had been considered ineligible when it arrived.
Unlike states like California, my county has no system that automatically notifies you about the status of your ballot. Unless you take the time to actively find out the status, you’re left in the dark. After I was unable to find any trace of my registration, I had to contact the county office once again, this time to ask whether my ballot made it. After a few days, I finally received confirmation on October 23rd that my ballot was received on October 8th. All that frustration, but at least my vote was counted.
Even though it was literally counted, did it actually count for anything? Did I feel like, after all that frustration, the entire process was actually worth it? Without a doubt, yes. Every confusing twist and turn, though inconvenient, was worth it in the end. And even though at the end of the day my vote didn’t do much in changing the outcome of Texas, I can still say that I contributed to probably one of the most important elections in recent history. A record number of people voted this year, with voter participation higher than it has been in a hundred years, and though Texas remained a Republican state once again, they were considered a swing state this year. In many countries around the world, voting is not a guarantee. As a woman, I would not have been able to vote a century ago. These are the types of things that are taken for granted now, but this election has served as a reminder of what is at stake. My vote may not have counted for much in the final count, but being able to vote is a reminder of my privilege. The increased turnout is a positive sign, but the frustrating voting process is no doubt a deterrent to some who could not vote in person this year. Shouldn’t a process that is crucial to the democratic integrity of your country be more accessible? Without change, complicated and frustrating experiences similar to my own could continue to deter future voters from their right, and duty, to vote.