What do we say to the 70 million who voted for Trump?

What do you do with a country that’s polarized in a hotly contested election that comes down to a handful of votes? What do you do with those who voted for the losing candidate? What do you do when the losing side thinks the outcome was unfair?

No, I’m not talking about the blowout election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, in which the president lost by 6 million popular votes and an Electoral College 306-232 landslide.

I’m talking about the 2000 election, in which Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral college 271-266 as a result of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. In that election — the one with the infamous “hanging chads” — George W. Bush won the state of Florida by 537 votes. Florida was run by W’s brother, Gov. Jeb Bush. Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris openly campaigned for Bush and certified the vote, leading things to go to the Supreme Court when Gore pushed for a recount that was rejected 5-4 on “conservative/liberal” lines.

In 2000, Black Florida voters voted 10 to 1 in favor of Gore over Bush. But Blacks were disenfranchised in a multitude of ways in Florida. According to University of South Florida St. Petersburg professor emeritus Darryl Paulson, more than 190,000 “over votes” were cast, meaning the voter cast a vote for two candidates in the same race. Under Florida law, these votes were illegal and discounted. Many of them were Black voters.

In Duval County, voters were given instructions that led to thousands of votes being disqualified based on the layout of their ballots. This included one out of every three Black votes in Jacksonville. On Palm Beach County’s “butterfly” ballot, candidates were listed on both pages, leading voters to accidentally punch the wrong hole, try to correct it, and then get disqualified. A New York Times study concluded that Black precincts, which were more likely to have faulty equipment or ballots, had three times as many rejected ballots as white precincts.

Separately, Secretary of State Harris sent out a list of more than 700,000 folks deemed “convicts and ex-convicts” and ineligible to vote (many erroneous) under a 19th century law that disqualifies those convicted of a felony from voting for life unless the Governor and cabinet restored those rights. This practice disproportionately prevented Black voters from voting.

I don’t remember the calls for empathy nor the “Stop the Steal” movement in 2000. But alas, stealing the vote of Black Americans is an accepted strategy in American elections where suppression far outweighs fraud.

As Paul Weyrich, one of the fathers of the modern conservative movement, said in 1980, “I don’t want everybody to vote.” The 13th amendment, poll tax, literacy tests, violence, 2013 Voting Rights Act gutting, etc. have consistently made clear who “everyone” is. Trump’s post-election attempts to steal Black votes in Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philly, and Detroit by lawsuit is on brand. Today’s James Crow, Esquire is a dressed-up version of yesterday’s Jim Crow.

Florida, which in 2000 had 31% of Black men legally disenfranchised, still utilizes felonies and fees to disproportionately disenfranchise Black voters for the same drug offenses that we make empathetic books and movies like Hillbilly Elegy about or invest in NARCAN to blunt opioid overdoses of whites who we don’t want to purge from voting rolls.

In 2000, I remember my already present depression being exacerbated by watching Black folks get cheated in my first presidential election. My recommendation to the 70 million voters who voted for the person who lost this less close election? Do what I did. Try therapy and work through it. Maybe challenge the state legislators you re-elected to expand Medicaid so it’s more widely available.

This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 7:45 AM.