The country is in a sour mood. A Gallup Poll last month found 71 percent of Americans are dissatisfied “with the way things are going in the United States at this time.” Just 26 percent reported they were satisfied.
We did not ask that question in last week’s MetroNews West Virginia Poll, but I suspect if we had the findings would be similar… maybe even worse. When Governor Earl Ray Tomblin gets booed in his home county of Logan because he’s there to host Hillary Clinton, you know the natives have gone from restless to resentful.
That anger may contribute to a larger voter turnout. Figures from Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office show 100,962 people cast ballots during the early voting period. That’s the most ever and nearly twice the number of the last presidential Primary Election in 2012, when 57,553 voted early.
Even though the anger is palpable, it’s reassuring that voters here today and across the country during this election year will go to the polls rather than picking up pitchforks. The late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said, “The major achievement of the Free Society is in the ability to change the status quo without violence, to cast a current practice into limbo and adopt a new one by an election.”
Douglas said a free society can remake, renovate or refashion itself through votes rather than through force. Even during the peak of heated campaign rhetoric, no rational individual seriously considers violence preferable to voting.
The white-hot discourse of election season can be off-putting, but it stands as an important distinction of a free society. Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, in his book The Case for Democracy, said a society that does not protect dissent and unpopular opinions is, by definition, tyrannical.
This election cycle does feel different. The popularity of Bernie Sanders, especially among young voters, and the success of Donald Trump demonstrate that large swaths of the country believe the system is broken and they’re ready to turn the place inside out.
But even they are advocating a transformation within the democratic process of elections where power is derived only through the consent of the governed. That should be enough to inspire optimism.
Closer to home, this is a huge election in West Virginia. We have a spirited contest for the Democratic nomination for Governor, a five-person race for a single seat on the state Supreme Court and hundreds of local races. Some of those contests will come down to a few votes, which means participating is important.
Remember, MetroNews will provide live continuous coverage of the Primary Election starting at 7:06 this evening, and you can follow the results at our website wvmetronews.com.