Editorial: Fear and loathing and long lines on election day

Thankfully, this long, strange, ugly presidential race comes to a close today as millions of Americans go to the polls. And when they do, they may find more confusion, bad behavior and even chaos, depending on where they cast their ballots.

Long lines, too. If early voting is any indication, Nov. 8 will be one for the record books. Voters stood in lines for hours over the weekend to cast early ballots and, perhaps, to avoid any election day unpleasantness. Voter registration records have been shattered all over the country, including in Texas and Nebraska, in Washington and Illinois. And in California. More Californians are registered to vote (19.4 million) than ever before, representing the highest percentage of eligible voters (78%) in two decades. The excitement over the candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008 evidently was not as motivating as the fear and loathing generated by the nominations of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

In many cases, the fears that have driven voters to the polls are overblown, if not ridiculous: that a Donald Trump victory would usher in fascism, or that Trump would recklessly trigger an apocalyptic nuclear exchange; that a President Hillary Clinton would fling the borders open to a tide of immigrants, some of whom would be terrorists; that the U.S. economy would tank if Trump prevailed (or Clinton, if you’re on the other side); that the election system would prove as rigged as a reality TV show; and that dead people and noncitizens would cast ballots in large numbers.

Phew. That’s a lot of baggage to carry into the voting booth, and it would be better for everyone to leave it at home. How we collectively conduct ourselves on Tuesday will influence how Wednesday, and the next four years, will go.

That’s especially important in places where emotions could run high — places such as the battleground state of Arizona. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio apparently plans to send his deputies out to the polls tomorrow, for reasons that are not clear. Arpaio faces criminal contempt charges for his heavy-handed approach to immigration in that border state, and the deployment of deputies may strike Latino voters as a subtle attempt to intimidate them.

Closer to home, mostly white conservative poll watchers in Orange County will be looking for signs of voting fraud. Normally, that would seem benign, but in 2016 it probably has more to do with the potential for this mostly Republican county to flip in the Democrats’ favor.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Really. Though the many Americans who endured hours-long waits to vote early may have been motivated by anger, fear or cynicism, the simple fact that they did indicates a heartening truth: Even with all the rhetoric about rigged elections and fraud, Americans still believe that the election system is fundamentally sound and that their vote counts. It is, and it does.

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