Voting for Climate Action

On November 18th, 2000, Judge Charles Burton held a paper ballot up to a ceiling light of the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center to determine whether a voter had properly hole-punched their choice for presidential candidate. The 2000 presidential election saw vice president Al Gore and Texas governor George W. Bush vying for the presidency. On November 7th of 2000, it had been determined that Gore had won the popular vote by 543,895 votes. Gore had won 255 electoral college (EC) votes, and Bush had won 246 electoral college votes (270 EC votes are needed to win the presidency). Each candidate needed to secure Florida’s 25 EC votes to win the presidency. When the ballots were counted on November 7th, it was determined that Florida was too close to call, and a machine recount was initiated. Gore, however, requested that a manual recount be conducted in four specific counties in Florida. The recount revealed uncertainties about which candidates had been chosen on the “butterfly ballots” that were used in those four counties. The holes that had been punched sometimes appeared to align with specific candidates, but those counting couldn’t be sure. Certain ballots were classified as “hanging chads” because of the misalignment between the hole-punch and the squares indicating a vote for a specific candidate. The case went to the supreme court in Bush v. Gore, and by a vote of 5 to 4, it was decided that the recount be stopped. This cemented the win for Bush, who had hung onto Florida by a count of 537 votes out of the 5,825,043 votes that had been cast in the state (0.009% of the total votes cast). The 2000 presidential election came down to a margin of a little over 500 eligible votes. Bush had won the electoral college by 1 vote. Bush maintained the presidency for eight years, and had the election gone to Gore, history would’ve been different in immeasurable ways. Gore was a staunch advocate for climate change legislation and Bush was committed to developing the country’s fossil fuel sector.

The 2000 presidential election is one of a great many examples that confirms why voting matters immensely. In 2016, the Franken vs Coleman election for senator of Minnesota came down to 312 votes for Franken; in 2012, the election of New Mexico’s 37th district representative came down to 8 votes; and in 2002, the Ruwet vs Kovaleski election for representative of Connecticut's 65th district came down to a margin of 1 vote for Ruwet. The 2017 Virginia House of Delegates election between Shelly Simonds and David Yancey was decided at random in favor of Shelly after a recount showed a draw. The notion that one vote won’t matter is false. Elections at all levels of government are sometimes decided by incredibly thin margins.

Voting is important not only for deciding close elections, but because the policies of specific candidates have the potential to improve environmental conditions. In 1970, the newly-formed EPA was given the authority to regulate emissions from common sources of air pollution under the Clean Air Act of 1970. Since the 1970’s, road vehicles have become 99% cleaner for several common types of air pollutants such as hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and particle emissions. In the 1960’s, the US Public Health service reported over 46,000 cases of waterborne diseases such as hepatitis, salmonellosis, and gastroenteritis, and the “Community Water Supply Study” of 1970, which was conducted by the EPA, reported that 90% of surveyed drinking water systems contained concentrations of harmful microbes that exceeded acceptable standards. After the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, the cleanliness of potable water in the U.S. began to steadily increase, and Americans now have access to some of the safest drinking water in the world. More recently, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in August of 2022, boosted the renewable energy market through tax credits for companies producing clean energy technology such as electric vehicles and carbon capture machines. Since the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act, billions of dollars have been invested in clean energy projects, and hundreds of thousands of jobs have been created in the renewable energy sector. The Inflation Reduction Act also imposed fines on certain facilities that exceed permissible methane emission standards. Political actions such as the Clean Air Act (1970), the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) would not have come to fruition had certain presidential candidates not been elected.

Voting is a right we shouldn’t take for granted because the fight for suffrage has been one of the defining struggles of our country’s history. Citizens have actively participated in government for thousands of years, such as in Ancient Mesopotamia, Pre-Colonial Africa and America, and ancient Greece. It has only been in the last 200 years that modern democracy has emerged, which means we are part of a political system that is incredibly young in the grand scheme of the history of governments. According to data collected utilizing the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification system, nobody lived in a country that could be characterized as a democracy in the year 1789. Three out of four people still had very few political rights by the start of the 1900s. Up until the passing of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1869, which gave African American men the right to vote, those who voted were mainly white property-owning men. It wasn’t until 1964 that poll taxes were eliminated, and until 1965 that Jim Crow laws, which had disenfranchised black voters for decades, were undermined. Women weren’t allowed to vote until the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement led to the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. The legal voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971. In 2018, 2.8 billion people were classified as living under an electoral democracy, which is what the U.S. currently operates under. Modern democracy is relatively new, and the right for American citizens over the age of 18 to vote is also relatively new, so taking advantage of these circumstances is imperative.

As U.S. citizens, it is important to research potential candidates and vote for those whose policies we agree with. Using voter guide websites such as ballotready.org, voters can figure out which candidates at the federal, state, and local levels of government are representing them. Citizens can also request ballots, find polling locations, check their voter registration status, and learn about other ways to participate in elections on ballotready.org. Ballotpedia.org shows important upcoming elections and which candidates will be listed on ballots for a specific location. It is also important to base our decision for a candidate mainly on the policies they support. Research has found that voters, even ones who are politically-engaged, mainly end up choosing a candidate on the basis of social identity and loyalty to their party as opposed to the values and policies that each candidate promotes. Votesmart.org provides unbiased facts about political candidates and officials at all levels of government, such as their stances on abortion, healthcare, taxes, federal spending, crime, immigration, and other issues.

There have been encouraging trends in voter turnout in recent U.S. elections. 62.8% of the eligible voting population (158.4 million people) participated in the 2020 presidential election and 46% turned out for the 2018 midterm elections. These aren’t the highest rates of voter turnout the country has ever seen (82.6% in 1876 between republican Rutherfurd B. Hayes and democrat Samuel Tilden), but they are up from the 2016 presidential election which saw only 54.8% of the eligible voting population casting votes. Voter turnout has decided many close elections, and according to recent polls of the 2024 presidential election, it will be a close call this year as well. Votes counted in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia (accounting for 93 EC votes all together) will be especially important for determining the next U.S. president. It is imperative to participate in our democratic system during this next election and stand by the values that the candidates uphold. Once millions of people vote, the tide of history can be turned.