Week 12 Assignment – Anupa Gulab

The 2020 presidential election has been the second presidential election I have personally witnessed since moving to the United States. Although I’ve only experienced two, this one was definitely the most intense and scary one yet, and there are many reasons for this. For example, I noticed during this election people were avoiding the poll results online because of the 2016 presidential election chaos. They did not want to have false hope of someone winning than finding out later they did not. However, I could not stop refreshing that page to keep up with every vote being counted. Another aspect of this election that racked up the intensity was the length. The moment the in polls votes started coming to an end I thought it was finally over, but then later found out that the mail-in ballots needed to be counted. This was when things started to look better, we started seeing the flip states turn blue which brought a sense of hope to me. Then the next morning we found out that our country’s democracy is back. That made me feel relieved and again hopeful that better things are to come.