NewsNation

Vittert: Elections are messy and America is better for them

(NewsNation) — You’ve heard a lot of discussion over the weekend about election predictions and how they went wrong.

Who showed up and who didn’t. Why the polls did not capture Democratic enthusiasm. Why Republicans actually don’t like crazy candidates … I could keep going.


That said, there was one election prediction from a week ago, tonight that was spot on.

We won’t be able to make projections on who will win any races until Tuesday night, but we can confidently project that regardless of what happens, the sun will rise in the east the next day. That’s Wednesday, if you’re keeping track, and America will be better for it. Despite warnings to the contrary by President Joe Biden, democracy will continue. The republic and the experiment started nearly 250 years ago will endure. Mr. Biden and his old boss, former President Barrack Obama, were right when saying some version of “we can’t take America for granted,” but we also have to give it a lot of credit.

Leland Vittert NOV 7, 2022

Yes … all of that happened, and the sun came up every day since then.

They are still counting votes in Maricopa County, Arizona. That in and of itself is messy and slightly irritating but nothing is perfect. We’ll have more on that Tuesday.

But at least they are counting. There are Republicans and Democrats watching each ballot signature.

Election officials in Russia and Saudi Arabia don’t spend a lot of time signature matching absentee ballots.

Have you ever heard of a hanging chad in China? No … that’s the point.

We try. It’s not always perfect.

But it’s better than anywhere else. When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia during the summer of 1776, they didn’t try to create a perfect union, but a more perfect one.

Can you imagine if cable news covered the Constitutional convention of 1787? Talk about a threat to democracy.

They tore up the Articles of Confederation, barely agreed on the Constitution, and then needed the Bill of Rights.

Every election we have, every hard thing we get through, is a testament to their genius — not their perfection.