Every two years Americans go back to the polls, and it reminds us that this nation belongs to its citizens.
This morning, in a school gymnasium near you, a retired teacher and a neighbor you half recognize set up folding tables before dawn, taped the sample ballots to the wall, and checked the roster one more time. They will sit there until the doors close tonight, handing strangers a paper ballot and a sticker. It happens with so little ceremony that it is easy to miss what you are looking at.
The Framers built this rhythm on purpose. Article I gives the House of Representatives, the chamber closest to the people, a term of just two years, the shortest in the Constitution. Senators got six years and presidents four, while the people's chamber answers on a two-year clock. That beat has run underneath American life since 1788. Whatever the country is arguing about, the calendar comes around and the owners walk in to inspect the property.
It has not missed once in 238 years. In 1862 the Union held a midterm election in the middle of the Civil War, and in 1864, with the war still undecided, soldiers voted from the field, against their commander in chief if they chose. Lincoln stood at a White House window that November and explained why it had to be so: "We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."
The election of 1918 went ahead through a pandemic that was killing thousands of Americans a week. The elections of 1942 and 1944 went ahead with millions of voters in uniform scattered across two oceans, their ballots chasing them to foxholes and flight decks. Elsewhere monarchies fell and constitutions were suspended for emergencies large and small. Ours never was.
Today belongs to the people in line at the gymnasium, in the 250th year of the American experiment, doing the quiet thing that keeps the deed current. The polls are open. Go vote, and maybe take someone with you.
Read the full essay on Substack: https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-drumbeat