I did not sleep well Monday night before yesterday's 15-hour Election Day, nor did I sleep well last night. My post today will be somewhat selective. I don't have the energy to get too far into too many things. Yesterday tired me out more than usual. I was shadowing the precinct chief whom I am replacing rather than my usual job of being ballot officer. We also had a very unexpected turnout, as many as we would expect for a presidential election. We started the day with 700 ballots; a mid-day delivery of extra ballots was the only way we could give out over 800. We finished the day giving out pre-folded ballots that had been prepared for absentee ballot mailings. As for results, the candidate of my choice did not win in my precinct or overall. I will have to live with that. The fact that the predicted "red wave" did not sweep over the country is noteworthy. Our constitutional republic might survive after all.
There are a couple of results from recent polls not on the elections but on the coronavirus. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in mid-October found 23 percent of respondents saying that the COVID outbreak would be "very important" to their vote. In an October Gallup poll, only one percent of voters thought that the COVID virus was the most important problem facing the country. Many Republican candidates attacked the Democrats' COVID funding and promised to get rid of various mandates including the military vaccination one. At the state level, many Republican incumbents campaigned on how quickly they had reopened their districts or states.
Alcohol-induced deaths skyrocketed during the pandemic. Over 49,000 people died in 2020, a 26 percent jump over 2019. The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers said alcohol abuse was "already a crisis" but "exploded" due to the pandemic. Alcohol abuse and more sexually transmitted diseases. Hasn't the pandemic been wonderful?
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