Election Day is upon us now, as early voting and absentee voting have been going on for weeks. I’ve always enjoyed voting at my local precinct on Election Day, reacquainting with neighbors, chatting as we wait in line, and quietly casting my ballot in dozens of Virginia’s local, state, and federal contests. However, I’m voting early this year, in person at a satellite polling place, to ensure that there is time to resolve or rectify any issues that may arise as the Trump Administration’s Departments of Justice and Homeland Security threaten the safety and security of registered voters exercising their sacred civic responsibility.  

I don’t like feeling this way. No one should, but I am reminded of an incident decades ago when my uncle, a white Irish Catholic Army Colonel from New York, went to vote at his polling place in Fairfax County’s Belle Haven area. He was refused a ballot until he could prove that he had paid Virginia’s poll tax. He had to return home and find the receipt, then rush back to the polling place before it closed at 7 p.m. and prove that he was entitled to vote. This was in 1965, after the 24th Amendment abolished a poll tax requirement for federal elections but did not address state and local elections. The Commonwealth of Virginia did not abolish its poll tax for state elections until 1966, after the United States Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Annie Harper, a Fairfax County resident, was one of several Virginia voters who sued the Virginia State Board of Elections to rescind the poll tax. More than a half-century later, in 2022, a state historic marker commemorating the case was installed on Fordson Road near where Ms. Harper had lived, and just 10 minutes from where my uncle had been sent home decades earlier.  

Voter disenfranchisement, threats to raid and remove ballot boxes and voting equipment, insistence that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, demands that sensitive personal voter information be shared with the White House and federal agencies, and hints that the military and National Guard might be mobilized to impede voting – all are charges coming from Trump and his administration to create distrust in what has been a secure and safe electoral system throughout our nation’s modern history. Candidates understood the risk that there were winners and losers, and that both would and could be gracious whether they won or lost. Conceding an electoral defeat can be difficult but reflects moral character. Likewise, winners can celebrate but do not gloat as they accept the responsibility and trust of the electorate with grace and humility. 

That’s the way it should work and did for the most part – until Trump came to power.  The past ten years have been chaotic — politically, economically, socially – as many of Trump’s rude and crude attempts to divide and demean America have been successful. Election Day provides the opportunity to reverse that dangerous course, to restore the checks and balances for governance outlined in the U.S. Constitution, to engender respect for all people in the United States and reverse the race to the bottom that is Trump’s signature and legacy. 

In Fairfax County, additional satellite locations for early voting will be open from October 22 to 31, weekdays from 1 to 7 p.m., Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, October 25, from noon to 5 p.m. Log on to fairfaxcounty.gov/elections for more information. The Fairfax County ballot includes U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, three state constitutional amendments, and two county bond issues. Falls Church City voters do not vote on county bond questions. Study the issues, plan to vote early or on Election Day, and celebrate the opportunity still to exercise your civic duty.