2026 Life Logs, Day 307: On Election Day
Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 62, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth MA
What an election night! The power of the people in the election was definitely stronger than the people in power and the millions and millions of dollars they spent to try and buy this election. The people of this country said loud and clear through their votes that we are not having it. Candidates willing to fight for our democracy while not taking big money in order to get elected have won the night so far. They did not have the millions from the richest man in the world poured into their campaigns, but they did have millions of people knocking on doors, making phone calls, writing postcards, sending small donations, getting out the early vote … people power is winning!
Heather and I went to local candidate Jack Richardson’s watch party tonight. Jack is only 24 years old and is running against a well-liked Republican incumbent to be the State Representative for part of Falmouth, Mashpee, and Bourne. It was a tense evening as the results from Falmouth in-person voting today showed Jack behind David Viera.
But as the evening progressed and results from early voting were added in, Jack pulled slightly ahead. But when Heather and I left sometime after 11 pm, votes from Bourne were still not in. When I got home, I turned on the television to get the latest update on the national scene. During the watch party, we had watched one Democratic candidate after another being projected to win their races. But it wasn’t until I was home, cuddled up on the couch with Shadow, that I began to truly realize what had been accomplished through this election—truly phenomenal. It is now 1 AM and I am going to bed. I still do not know if El-Sayed in Michigan is going to win. And the results in Maine are still not in. So, I go to bed feeling great about the results so far but not yet celebrating until the final votes are counted.
One thing I do know as I go to bed on this election night is that I have done everything I could in the past year, right up until the sun set today, to use my personal ‘people power’, and that feels good. I will sleep peacefully. This morning I traveled to New Bedford to be a non-partisan election observer for the New Bedford Coalition to Protect the Vote. Foreign-born residents living in New Bedford make up more than 20% of the population and the Coalition wanted to make sure those who are eligible to vote could do so. Federal agents were at the polls for the primary in September, so we were there to make sure those who are eligible to vote could do so. But the federal agents did not show up for this election, at least not at the poll where I was stationed. My only regret when I left there just before noon was that I do not speak Portuguese. So many people in southeast Massachusetts are Portuguese speakers, so maybe this is something I will add to my to do list! Then after getting home to walk Shadow and eat lunch, I went to the Dems Headquarters to get a sign for Jack Richardson and headed to one of the precinct polling places to hold the sign until the sun went down. Thankfully, Heather and Jed invited me over for dinner so I didn’t have to cook before heading to the watch party. It was a full and uplifting election day watching so many people streaming in to vote.
