It was more of a pink ebb tide rather than a red wave but at least the midterm elections are over along with the continuous, and repetitive coverage on the news channels. I am interested in elections and the impact they have on our republic but for the last few weeks, the coverage became so pervasive that if Vladimir Putin had been overthrown or an asteroid the size of Texas was discovered coming straight at the earth, we probably wouldn’t have known about those things until a day or two after the elections.

I think that the most important news to come out of the midterms, especially for Republicans is the emergence of Governor Ron DeSantis as the face of the Republican Party. He is a smart politician who stands up for what he believes in, and he has done an outstanding job as the governor of Florida.

It’s apparent that in the wake of the midterms Republicans are beginning to turn to him as the candidate most likely to beat whomever the Democrats run in 2024. In 2024 DeSantis will be just 46,

Donald Trump 78 and Joe Biden 82. Further Trump, if elected with only one term remaining, would be a “lame duck” on taking office, but DeSantis if elected would enter office in a better position to get his legislative programs passed by Congress.

In 2020 Trump was blamed for the Republican loses in the senate runoff elections in Georgia and now following the less than stellar results in 2022 many are blaming him for several important loses by supporting candidates who supported his position on the 2020 election results rather than their ability as candidates. We won’t know for a while whether all this signals a changing of the guard in the Republican party or is only wishful thinking on the part of “never Trumpers” or an outgrowth of the medias “love, hate” relationship with Trump.

As I see it, While Republicans indulged in wishful thinking about a red wave the effort by Democrats, led by Joe Biden, who was willing to tell any lie necessary to scare voters into thinking that a Republican victory would mean the end of American democracy may have been more effective with independent voters than it was thought to have been. In addition, the promise by Biden to aid in paying off student loans, although currently paused by the courts, may have been effective in rallying young voters to the Democratic cause. I guess they support robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Regarding the mechanics of the election, I think early voting is an aberration of our elections system that has become popular among mainly Democrats. My position is that the nation survived and flourished during the first 233 years following the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 with all voting done on election day.

This year Pennsylvania started early voting on Oct. 4, five weeks before election day and the result was John Fetterman. It is estimated that 80,000 Pennsylvania voters cast early ballots in 2022 and it’s possible that is where John Fetterman found his margin of victory. I frankly can’t imagine that any sensible voter who saw his pathetic and rather sad debate performance late in the campaign could have voted for him.

I also have an issue with mail in ballots for the simple reason that while they may simplify voting they also simplify election fraud which is a greater danger to American democracy than a victory by Republicans.

I think that at least for midterm and presidential elections, election day should be declared a national holiday as is done in a number of countries and we could even make it a two-day period. Some will tell us that we already have too many holidays or that elections fall at the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and that valuable sales would be lost. However, for the sake of our democracy, isn’t it better for voters to cast ballots when candidates are well known to them, and issues clearly defined?

Have computerized voting machines and tabulators really improved the election process? I’m not sure especially when I heard stories on election day that 20% of the polling stations in Arizona had electronic tabulators that were rejecting all ballots although we probably shouldn’t be surprised by that when you consider how slow and fumbling that states vote counting process was. Of course, Neveda was not any better.

Back in the good old days, when I started voting, we knew the election results from across the country by 1 a.m.. Now, in this computerized age, it’s common to have many races still undecided a day or nearly a week later. Last Wednesday morning as Arizona crept along with its vote counting, I heard Stephen Richer, the Recorder of Maricopa County, Ariz., explain the counties vote counting process and as he went on and on and on explaining it, I realized why some “state of the art” computerized systems over complicate the process and slow at to a crawl. We must do better.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com