We do not know who will be the next president of the United States. As I write this, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, some of the networks have called the state of Ohio for President Bush. As recounts are contemplated and provisional ballots counted, no one is sure who has won what so many have deemed the most important election of our lives. Many of my fellow students are gathered around computers and televisions waiting for the end of a very long day. I cannot help but feel that we are also awaiting the end of four very long years.
Every eligible voter I know cast a ballot yesterday. For the first time in my life as a citizen, there was a buzz in the air, an excitement about our political process. We spent the day talking about absentee ballots, turnout rates and lines at the voting booths as though we had never been called the Apathetic Generation. Pundits on television speculated about the effect of the youth vote on this race, wondering aloud what it was that had lit a fire underneath us all. For those of us who began our freshman year watching the Twin Towers fall, who have watched as our country learned to live through fear, went to war, debated the definition of marriage and faced a shaky economy, there was no shortage of reasons to go to the polls. Many of us too young to vote in 2000, we knew that each of our votes could make a difference.
Early estimates suggest that nearly 60 percent of the electorate voted yesterday. Now, as Brokaw and Jennings struggle to fill the hours as ballots are counted, the election comes down to the state of Ohio.
We must change the way elections are carried out in this country. The nightmare scenarios of electoral ties, litigated ballots and malfunctioning voting machines are vivid now, as we are gripped by election drama. We must have a real debate about the value of the Electoral College and about the danger of contests that end in the courtroom. We must harness the energy of this presidential race to demand real change.
But that is a question for next week, when we know where this country is headed. If John Kerry has won, erasing the deficit he faces in Ohio, the millions of Americans who have mobilized this year will be vindicated. Everyone who wrote a letter to her congressman, joined a protest, wore a button or registered to vote will know that the change she believe is necessary is on its way.
I do not know how we move forward if George W. Bush is reelected. I do not know how we face the rest of the world or one another. Exit polls show that moral values and the economy defined this election. Seventy eight percent of those who cited morality as a key voting issue chose President Bush as their candidate. I cannot imagine telling the mother of a soldier in Iraq or the child of a victim of 9/11 that this administration was returned to Washington because our nation is afraid of what might happen if a man married another man or a woman ended a pregnancy in her seventh month. I cannot imagine the next four years.
I became a columnist for The Daily Princetonian not long after President Bush took office. In the years since, I have never written a column without hope, without a call for action or change. I have always believed in the power of the American people, and of our generation in particular, to achieve that change. Today, as we wait for the final results, we must hope that that belief was not misplaced. Whatever happens, we must soldier on. We must not retreat, conceding our beliefs in defeat or becoming complacent in victory. Our voices need not only be heard on Election Day.
I voted in my first presidential election this year. Now, all I can do is watch as the returns come in, as the networks move states from column to column, sure only that we have more uncertainty in our future. Election Day began as a day of hope. Today, as we wonder what the next hours and years will bring, all we can do is wait. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills. Her column appears every other Wednesday. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.
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