Election Day

Election Day is when we choose our leaders. What happens the next morning may matter even more.

As a boy growing up in North Carolina, I remember standing with my father beneath a huge chalkboard outside the local newspaper office, watching election returns arrive precinct by precinct. Neighbors gathered, candidates waited, and everyone shared in the outcome. Those memories still remind me of something almost sacred about democracy. But I’ve come to realize that the responsibilities of citizenship go well beyond the moment we cast our ballots.

American history offers some uncomfortable lessons about what happens when a nation tries to return to normal without confronting abuses of power. From the betrayal of Reconstruction to the aftermath of Watergate, we’ve seen how easily the desire to move on can leave deeper problems unresolved. Today, those lessons deserve our attention, particularly as wealth and political influence threaten to diminish the voices of ordinary citizens.

In The Work That Begins After Election Day, I consider the difference between restoring familiar institutions and making them worthy of our trust. Thomas Paine believed we had the power to begin the world over again. That promise still belongs to us, along with the obligation to act upon it. Voting gives us a voice in who governs. What we do afterward helps determine what kind of country we become.