Health Beats Election Day 2024 Blog-Theresa Lou Bowick, BSN, RN
Hello Rochester, this is Nurse Bowick.
The highly anticipated Election Day 2024 has finally arrived. The polls are open
today from 6a-9pm. Tonight, tomorrow or in the coming days or weeks,
presidential candidates will concede to the others and the United States of
America will have a newly elected President. On January 20th, 2025, the new
leader of the free world will take his or her seat on the throne.
I must ask this question, Frontliners, what is election day for the disenfranchised,
detached and disengaged? What does this day mean to those that have made it
clear that they give heck who wins or loses the presidential election? These folks
are not undecided, and on the fence. They are opting out this election because
they do not believe, that in this America, they can have a fence.
Remember the old American dream, the dream that everyone can attain a
husband or wife, two and half kids, dog, car and house with a white picket fence.
White picket fences were most popular in suburban middle-class neighborhoods.
These were the symbols of success, stability, family, and peaceful living, that
bellows to the world that you made it.
Did you know that approximately eighty million people did not vote in the
2020 presidential election? When surveyed, it was reported that over thirty of
that eighty million Americans were not interested and/or didn’t feel that their
vote would make a difference.
When the 2024 presidential election results are certified, some will rejoice,
some will mourn. I will use the words of the great Frederick Douglass to remind
our newly elected President, that the rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity and independence, is not shared by all Americans. Eighty million is far
too many disenfranchised, detached and disengaged Americans. Do Something!
From the station that cares about the community 103.9 WDKX.
Over 30 million folks feeling their vote wouldn’t have made a difference
More Americans voted in 2020 than in any other presidential election in
120 years. About 67% of eligible voters cast ballots this year, but that still
means a third did not.
That amounts to about who stayed home.
To better understand what motivates these nonvoters, NPR and the Medill
School of Journalism commissioned Ipsos to conduct a survey of U.S.
adults who didn’t vote this year. The Medill school’s graduate students did
deep dives into various aspects of the survey here.
Nonvoter’s reasons for not voting include:
not being registered to vote (29%)
not being interested in politics (23%)
not liking the candidates (20%)
a feeling their vote wouldn’t have made a difference (16%)
being undecided on whom to vote for (10%)
The American dream is the belief that anyone can attain their own version of success in a society
where upward mobility is possible for everyone.
