Yes, today is the day voters in the US head to voting places in what are termed “midterm elections,” coming halfway through the term of the sitting President. Two years ago, US voters re-elected Donald Trump. Two years from now, US voters will elect his successor. Rather than provide commentary on the issues we face in this election — I have done that from time to time in previous posts — I’m going to sketch the parameters of this election. That’s partly for the benefit of non-US readers, but also as a general reminder to all of us how screwy and confusing the US electoral system can be.

It’s a national election, but no national offices on the ballot. The only office which qualifies as a truly national office in the sense that all voters weigh in on the choice is the US President, and even that runs through a state-based electoral college, not a popular vote tally. All 435 voting Representatives in the US House of Representatives, the lower chamber, are elected today (and every two years) by individual voting districts within a state. Approximately one-third of the US Senate, the upper chamber, is elected today, by state voters as a whole.

Congress is theoretically the most powerful branch of government. According to the US Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse (it controls taxes and expenditures) and the power to declare war. It has the power to impeach and remove executive branch officers, including the President, and judicial appointees, including US Supreme Court justices. However, over the years a good deal of Congressional power has seeped over to the executive branch and the President. Trump has accelerated this process, exercising a variety of powers his predecessors declined to exercise, some of which are unlawful and have been so adjudicated by the courts. The MAGA Congress has largely demurred to Trump’s requests over the last two years rather than acting as an independent branch of government.

If Democrats win control, Congress will attempt to reassert its powers. And it will be a dogfight. Much turns on whether the Democrats win a majority in the Senate (possible but not likely) as well as a majority in the House (almost a certainty at this point given Trump’s deep unpopularity).

The newly elected Congress is not seated until January. That’s right — the 120th Congress (that is, Representatives and Senators as a whole, the two chambers) will not be sworn in and seated until January 3, 2027. Until then, the current House and Senate will continue to function. And it is widely expected that Trump will use those two months and the powers of the executive branch to contest the results of the midterm races that don’t go his way in ways both legal (a lawsuit, for example) and illicit. That’s not how the system is supposed to work and not how it worked under previous presidents. That it will almost certainly happen over the next two months is a sign of Trump’s ongoing corruption of the system.

Gerrymandering. Gerrymandering refers to the party in control of a given state legislature redrawing US House of Representative districts in their state to favor their own party. If done cleverly, a state with ten seats, 55% A voters, and 45% B voters split might end up with seven or eight A representatives and only two or three B representatives. But parties were never proud of gerrymandering. It was the dirty little secret of the redistricting process (generally done every ten years after the US Census and reapportionment of seats to states). But with Trump’s encouragement and no sense of shame, Republican states have done some redistricting this year (out of cycle) to hopefully shift some of the state’s seats into the Republican column. Democratic states have responded in kind. Just another example of how Trump has corrupted our politics. Gerrymandering is sometimes described as representatives choosing their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives. It runs counter to the spirit of free and fair elections that everyone gives lip service to. Well, almost everyone.

Dummymandering. You might hear this term tonight and tomorrow as election results come in and are reported. The problem with gerrymandering is it turns on an accurate assessment of how voters in various counties and areas in the state will vote, which then dictates how to slice up the state so as to favor the majority party doing the gerrymandering in that state. If there is a bad forecast of voter behavior, gerrymandering can backfire and actually cause the gerrymandering party to lose seats! From our example earlier, the attempt to get seven seats with slimmer margins of victory (compared to five safe seats with larger margins of victory) might end up losing several of those new “slimmer margin” seats they intended to win if voters shift a few percentage points to the other party. That’s dummymandering. There is good evidence it’s going to happen in some states this election.

Remember, the Senate is gerrymander-proof. Every senator is elected by state voters as a whole. You can’t gerrymander a Senate seat. Also remember that every state, even the smallest, gets two senators. Rhode Island and New Hampshire get two senators. Texas and California get two senators. Only the House is population-weighted. Six states (Alaska, Delaware, the Dakotas, Vermont, and Wyoming) have only one representative in the House. California has 52. The Electoral College votes that a state casts in a presidential election are the sum of its representatives and senators. So Alaska has three electoral votes and California has 54.

Is voting rational? Since your one vote is unlikely to change the outcome given thousands or millions of votes in your state, one might claim that there is no point, from an individual’s point of view, to vote. Why bother? On the other hand, most of us consider it something like a civic duty to go cast a vote. Rights not exercised can be lost. Voter turnout certainly matters collectively — parties make great efforts to encourage their voters to get to the polls. That’s because voting is voluntary in the US. In some countries, it is mandatory: non-voters get assessed small fines or, in one-party states, a knock on the door from the local party thugs.

It’s a civic ritual. Not all rituals are religious. The cycle of campaigning, voting, tabulating results, reporting results, seeing voting maps on TV screens turning red or blue, declaring the winners, watching gracious concession speeches by the losers, the pageantry of swearing in and seating those newly elected — these are civic rituals of a healthy democracy. Not everyone follows this script anymore. I hope for the best but fear the worst for this cycle.

The LDS sustaining vote ritual. Let’s throw in a related LDS ritual here: the sustaining vote in General Conference. It is called a vote, but it’s not an election. No votes don’t really count and there are very few of them. Even if only 75% of the attendees voted to sustain — this would be stunning — it wouldn’t change anything. It’s just a ritual that acts to highlight those called to lead and gives the membership a chance to show their support. It’s like cheering at a football game. Fans cheer or boo, but only players move the ball and only refs call penalties and enforce the rules.

You can comment on any of the above or just share your experience voting this year. Did anyone see local law enforcement near the polls? Federal law enforcement (FBI or ICE) near polling places? Federal election monitors, usually from the DOJ and in casual business dress, so you might not even now they were there?

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