Election anxiety: Democrat or Republican, Americans are feeling it – By Harry Bruinius (CS Monitor) / Oct 19 2020
The direction of American democracy is riding on this election, and voters are dealing with the high anxiety of high-stakes variables that go beyond whom and what to vote for.
Like millions of other Americans, Michelle Deininger has found herself deeply frazzled about the presidential election this November.
A stay-at-home mother and self-described RINO, or “Republican in name only” living in Park City, Utah, she notes how the global pandemic, reeling economy, and ongoing eruption of civic unrest following the killings of George Floyd and others have now also become the nerve-wracking backdrop to one of the most momentous elections in her lifetime.
“I’m 52 and I’ve been voting since I turned 18, and I have never, not for a fraction of a second in my entire life, worried about the security and validity of an election until now,” says Ms. Deininger, a lifelong Democrat from Boston who switched parties two years ago to have a voice in her new Republican-dominated state. “And that’s just such a foreign, eerie, un-American feeling.”
Across the political spectrum, a host of Americans have been expressing similar anxieties, not only about the pivotal choice next month that will determine the direction of the country, but also about the very fabric of America’s political traditions, including its decentralized and state-varying ballot boxes.
Continue to article> https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1019/Election-anxiety-Democrat-or-Republican-Americans-are-feeling-it
