Fear the Stopped Clock of the American Electorate

Georgia Garvey
Fri, 07 Nov 2025 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

I once met a man who claimed to make up his mind who he wanted in presidential elections only after stepping into the voting booth.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked, aghast.

How could anyone, I marveled, not know who they were planning to vote for? What were they waiting for, a message from beyond the grave?
Updated: Sat Nov 08, 2025

I once met a man who claimed to make up his mind who he wanted in presidential elections only after stepping into the voting booth.

"Are you kidding me?" I asked, aghast.

How could anyone, I marveled, not know who they were planning to vote for? What were they waiting for, a message from beyond the grave?

"Yep," the guy said, kind of shrugging with a laugh.

The older I get, the more I think he's the Everyman American Voter: ignorant and indifferent.

In the wake of recent elections, I've read and heard plenty of crowing over the Democratic victories in gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey, the New York mayoral race and the California redistricting proposition.

These were wins, we've been told, for progressives, for democratic socialists, for liberals — for ideas and ideals, and they were repudiations of President Donald Trump, personally and politically. We're told Americans don't want Trump wriggling away from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. We don't want war with Venezuela, we don't want tariffs and we don't want daycare teachers manhandled into vans in front of crying children.

That all may be true.

But at the same time, there's an alternating, powerful storyline — one where the vast majority of Americans don't have much, if any, clue about the finer points of domestic politics. They're vibes voters, like my little buddy with the voting-booth decision-making.

For evidence, the state of Kentucky, where enough people reportedly were calling about their polling places being shut down that the Secretary of State had to clarify the situation on social media.

"We're getting calls about polls being closed," he posted. "They are closed because we do not have elections today. Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry."

I'm also reminded of the race in 2018 for Illinois' 3rd Congressional District. The Democrat was Dan Lipinski, a moderate incumbent. On the ticket for the Republicans was one Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who the party leadership itself had called a Nazi. The Illinois GOP had spent its own money to campaign against Jones and had urged Republicans to skip his name when voting.

On Election Day, though, Jones got 25.9% of the votes.

Now, what with Tucker Carlson recently playing podcast footsie with professional troll Nick Fuentes, antisemitism may be having a moment on the right, but with Jones, we're talking about seven years ago, back when it was considered somewhat uncouth to deny the Holocaust.

That means that somewhere close to a full fourth of voters in the district walked into their polling place and cast a ballot in either ignorance of or indifference to the fact that their candidate was a Nazi being actively campaigned against by his own party.

These are not the actions of an informed populace.

But an informed populace isn't required. The Roman Empire didn't fall to one. It fell to hundreds of geopolitical shifts and thousands of minor mistakes and, more than either of those, it fell to the passage of time.

"Time makes more converts than reason," Thomas Paine once wrote, and I think he's about right.

We're tempted, sometimes, to believe in the power of our own voice. I am just as guilty of that sin as anyone else is. We argue on social media, as if anyone listens or ever changes their minds. We debate our friends, and show up to protests, and sure, maybe some of that is like a ripple in a pond, but more often it's the tide that makes the wave.

As the resultant ill effects of tariffs and immigration enforcement overreach work on us the same way the moon works on the ocean, we're pulled, inexorably, toward change.

For better, for worse, change will come, and that should terrify any despot who believes himself entrenched in power, protected by the ignorance and indifference of those who could remove him.

Because if you simply wait long enough, even a dummy stopped clock will tell the right time. And twice a day at that.