U.S. election trudge even longer this year

“Donald Trump” and “Hillary Clinton” won the Third Annual Advocates for Family Peace Lip-Sync Battle on Oct. 29 for their mouthing of the Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes hit “Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing. Richie and Donna Johnson of Hibbing performed as the candidates. (Screenshot, FB video)

It’s a simple rule.

The United States of America holds elections the first Tuesday of November of an even-numbered year. Unless, of course, the first Tuesday is the first of the month. In that case, the election will be the next Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Every seven years, American elections last even longer than usual. By happenstance, or punishment from a vengeful deity (you pick), 2016 is just such a year.

That means that today, instead of reviewing the results of an election long decided in the hearts of weary voters, we look ahead to another week of campaigning.

If American elections seem long, it’s because they are. Quantifiably. Other countries have had entire elections, even entire governments, come and go in the time since our current presidential candidates started running for the job.

Here in Northern Minnesota, the Eighth Congressional District race is on track to be one of the nation’s most expensive. But over the border in Ontario, a very similar hotly contested district (they call them ridings) changed hands in last year’s Canadian federal election in an campaign that took just over two months. I wrote about this in an Oct. 19 Star Tribune commentary, “Canadians can’t fathom the length of our political campaigns.”

The campaign experience of voters in Fort Frances, Ontario, bears little resemblance to that of their neighbors in International Falls, Minn.

“The differences I can see involve the length and the amount of dollars thrown into these campaigns,” said [Liberal MP Don] Rusnak [of the Thunder Bay-Rainy River riding], when I spoke with him recently. “The major difference is the length of time. Our last election was the longest in recent memory in Canadian history, stretching more than two months from the end of August to Oct. 19.”

That 2015 contest was such an unusual event that Rusnak even used the rare tactic of taking out a few local TV ads.

Rusnak said the extra few weeks of campaigning in 2015 were hard on political volunteers. “I couldn’t even imagine the length of campaigns in the U.S.,” he added, “the amount of resources involved.”

The commentary, my first (perhaps not last) to appear in the printed edition of the Star Tribune, attracted the attention of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Thunder Bay. So if you’d like to hear a delightful conversation between a Canadian and I about elections, you can hear that here.

The only word I can use to describe our US election this year is “obscene.” Thanks to Donald Trump, Election 2016 is sometimes literally obscene. But the money spent and issues left unaddressed are probably worse in their own ways.

I can remember having disagreements with family about politics, sometimes vehemently so. This happend often when I was a young liberal college student. I’m still liberal, but the disagreements have changed. We’re not talking about the nuances of health care policy, or the government’s role in developing public education. The disagreements now are all fact- and values-based arguments. What is true? (Nothing I disagree with). What is right? (Nothing I disagree with).

That’s doubly ironic since both misinformation and a lack of core values seem at the heart of most of what I see on social media these days. The nation has been free-based pathos for so long we no longer know why.

It’s really hard to imagine these next few days being good for the country or anyone in it.

Anyway, voter attitudes are pretty well locked now, but thanks to the extra week we find ourselves playing what is essentially a psychological game. Who’s going to give up and just not vote? Who’s going to relent to the pressure of their peers or the television ads?

I came up with a term to describe this in a recent conversation: election relativity. Time slows in relation to an American election.