An Election to Remember

Written by Dhruv Gupta, Grade 7

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Photo by Dwight Burdette

Election. Democrats. Republicans. These are all things we’ve heard before. Hopefully, you know that the election happens every four years. One Democratic candidate and one Republican candidate and a bunch of independents compete to try to become the president of the USA. Eventually, one candidate wins and everything gets settled. However, this year, things were different. It took a long time to decide the president, and it was a nerve-wracking election that will go down in the history books. In the 2020 Elections, Trump was the Republican candidate, and Biden was the Democratic candidate. Also, Kanye West ran for president. What a crazy year! Now, let’s get into my experience with the 2020 Elections.

It all started a few weeks before election day. People were talking about “propositions,”and “mail-in ballots.”  I didn’t pay much attention at first, but eventually, the election got interesting. The election this year was also different because of a little something called coronavirus (COVID). Maybe you’ve heard of it before? Due to COVID, many people didn’t want to go in-person to vote, so millions of voters decided to mail in their ballots early. By Election Day, 94 million ballots had been cast in (Feiner, Credit); now, the world was just waiting to see who had gotten those votes.

When Election Day finally rolled around, everyone was super excited, but also kind of nervous. The results started coming in around five in the afternoon. Trump started strong with a lead. However, Biden started catching up; it was very close, and it was unclear which candidate would take the lead. It appeared that Trump was beating Biden by a pretty big margin, but this is because of the mail-in ballots. Remember those? Trump supporters tended to vote in person, so their votes were counted immediately and tallied for Trump. But, Biden supporters tended to vote using mail-in ballots, and the results of those votes didn’t come in until later, so Biden didn’t have all of his votes cast for him on Election Day. Later that night, things came to a head when Arizona was called for Biden. It was controversial because Trump thought it should have been called for him.

In a couple of days, most states had been called. But then things came to a standstill. Biden was very close to victory. If Biden won any state now, he would have won! He was leading in about half of the remaining states, and Trump in the other ones. Almost every remaining state was very close, too, so even if one person was leading, the other could still win that state easily. We waited for a few days, as votes continued being counted, but there was no winner until four days after Election Day. Biden had won Nevada and Pennsylvania, and combined with wins in Wisconsin and Michigan from earlier, that was enough for him to win! The election is finally over; The Electoral College has made Joe Biden the president of The US. Trump had tried to convince people that he had won, not Biden, but that is not true and he has officially lost.

All in all, this election was very intense. It revealed the hard process of running for president. On TV, lots of ads for both of the candidates showed up. On the debate floor, their ideas clashed in a crazy debate. And in the polls, it was an incredibly close race toward the leader of the United States. It showed that even when there is a global pandemic going on, we still use democracy to pick a good president, even if the process is hard.

- Dhruv Gupta