What society expects of you and what you actually want in life can be different things.
Berrak Sarikaya always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. In high school, she threw herself into mock trial and debate. The oldest child of Turkish immigrant parents, Sarikaya understood the gravity of getting into a good college and the necessity of scholarships to fund that schooling. “One of the biggest reasons that we came to the US was for me and my brothers to get a good education and have better opportunities,” Sarikaya, 37, says. “So there was definitely that pressure of if I don’t go to college, then all of it will have been a waste.”
When it came time for higher education, Sarikaya’s hard work paid off. She enrolled in her dream school, George Washington University, and lived at home. Her freshman year was enjoyable, she says, but grueling, with full days of classes, studying, homework, and working at a grocery store and a bank. By her sophomore year, however, the sheen had worn off. Her classes weren’t challenging, and she wasn’t feeling fulfilled by the coursework. What’s more, tuition jumped, and her parents took out loans to supplement her scholarship.
By this point, Sarikaya was working at law offices and she felt this experience provided her with more real-world training than sitting in a classroom. Though college was the thing her family and society “expected” of her, an achievement many young Americans also feel pressured to attain, Sarikaya dropped out of college.
“There was a lot of having to get over or step away from people’s expectations,” Sarikaya says.
Among life’s many chapters and milestones, Americans have come to see some events — like college, marriage, homeownership, child-rearing, and career success — as achievements they must fulfill in order to maintain the status quo. Because so many follow these “traditional” paths, both in real life and in Western popular culture, we learn from a young age to model and emulate these behaviors. Family and cultural traditions can dictate what is expected of us throughout life, particularly among women, which can elicit anxiety when those benchmarks aren’t reached. When people are rewarded and celebrated for graduating from college or getting married, we internalize these events as being desirable. Thus, people can feel pressured to fit an assumed mold or fear being alienated when bucking convention.
“What researchers have found is that people conform their behaviors to those around us, mostly to gain acceptance,” says Daryl Van Tongeren, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College. “So a lot of times, we go along doing what other people do because we want to fit in, we want to be accepted, we want to be liked.”
When culture provides limited road maps for the future, these life events can seem nonnegotiable. External pressure from family, friends, and media further muddies the waters, potentially creating an emotional conundrum when it comes to determining what you really want for the future. Through time and reflection, you can use your values and motivations as guides for a fully authentic life.
Living on autopilot
Many people don’t stop to consider what they truly want out of life, Van Tongeren says. They consume media and observe loved ones moving through the world checking familiar boxes, “and we usually try to dutifully follow those scripts,” he says. When life is full of “shoulds” — you should go to college, get married, buy a nice house, have kids, become the boss, etc. — there is very little room for improvisation. Because so many of these milestones are tied to wealth, those without the means to afford tuition or a mortgage can feel they lack an accurate model for how to approach life.
However, it isn’t until you stray from the path — either purposely or accidentally — that you consider whether the road well traveled is the right one for you. When Sarikaya realized college wasn’t all she’d hoped, she took more chances in her career, moving from taking roles in law-adjacent positions to working in communications and government affairs, and finally to striking out on her own path as an independent content marketing strategy consultant. (She maintains her dream of going to law school.) “At times, there are these inflection points where we can evaluate our behavior relative to what society is telling us,” Van Tongeren says. “In those moments, we try to gain clarity as to whether or not we’re living a life of authenticity.”
Look internally
To home in on the events and activities that make your life meaningful, you have to get to the root of your motivations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people feel more competent, more connected to others, and more independent when they are intrinsically motivated — that is, internally or self-motivated. When parents, friends, or other outside forces pressure you to, say, pursue a career in medicine when you really want to work in fashion — known as extrinsic motivation — you might feel stressed, afraid of missing out on what your peers are doing, unfulfilled, or concerned you’ll upset a parent if you stray from the path, says Jeremy Nicholson, a social and personality psychologist.
The things you’re intrinsically motivated to do are the ones that will feel the most authentic. However, if you grew up with certain expectations, obligations, and social examples, knowing what fulfills you can be difficult. Nicholson recommends paying attention to your feelings when confronted with significant milestones. Are you running away from something or running toward it? Are you afraid of being seen as a failure if you don’t aspire to be a supervisor at work?
People should think about how competent, connected, and autonomous they’d feel when faced with certain responsibilities, like parenting. “For example, if they believed they would make a good spouse or parent, enjoyed being around a particular partner or kids, and felt free to make the choice, then the decision would likely be self-determined,” Nicholson says. “In contrast, if they felt entirely unprepared for the role, didn’t really see themselves connecting with a spouse or kids, and were being pressured into making the decision by other people, then they might not personally value reaching the milestone at that time.”
Another question to ask yourself is why you might want a big house, to send your kids to a certain school, or to climb the corporate ladder, says licensed marriage and family therapist Mercedes Coffman. “Is it because you want the validation from others? Are you in med school because your mom and dad told you that that’s a career that would make them proud?” she says. “That is just going off of validation of others. That’s not an authentic goal of yours.” That external fulfillment never lasts long, Coffman adds, and you’re likely to feel disappointed and to search for the next “thing” from which you can earn approval. Alternatively, if you’ve always wanted a house with a big yard so you can rescue dogs and host your large family for get-togethers because of your genuine appreciation for animals and loved ones, your motivations are internally driven.
Remember, your self-worth isn’t measured by validation and acceptance from others, says therapist Natasha Sharma, the CEO of NKS Therapy. “It’s not about asking the question, ‘What do you want out of life?’ which sets you up for external measurements again, and some kind of ‘measured entity’ or ‘output,’” Sharma says. “Instead, ask yourself: ‘What do I enjoy about life?’”
Consider your values
Simple enough at face value, “What do I enjoy about life?” is a deceptively difficult question. Since no one enters this world as a fully realized human, this takes some trial and error. Coffman says to consider what naturally excites you and to feed those desires. “If you lived on an island and there was nobody around to people-please or to impress, what is it that you would want in your life?” she says. “What is it that you would be doing? What are your natural passions and skills? What excites you naturally?”
Think about the things you value most in life and weigh your decisions against these values. For instance, if you’re considering accepting a higher-paying new job that perhaps looks good on paper but would involve moving away from your community, reflect on how much you value your autonomy, relationships, and finances. “If people really value autonomy, and they really value relationships, but maybe they value financial freedom a little bit less so, can they pick a job that will give them autonomy and allow them to pursue deep relationships, even if it means they take less money?” Van Tongeren says.
Or, if you and your partner are wondering if you should get married, each of you should reflect on what shaped your views of marriage. Did your parents constantly fight and you fear your marriage might be similarly mired in conflict? Do you want to get married because all your friends are doing so and you feel left out? Having answers to these questions can help you move forward authentically.
This work is difficult and, frankly, terrifying. Few people would willingly embark on a thought exercise that puts their entire life into question. However, consider the alternative: coasting along in a career or relationship you don’t quite feel passionate about because you never considered other possibilities. At any age, setting aside time and intentionality to decipher what motivates you and whether you’ve been living authentically can be enlightening. This isn’t to say a life full of “traditional” markers of success and happiness isn’t worthwhile, but some contemplation can determine if these milestones are desirable for you.
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Instead, its messy execution gets in the way.
In some ways, Partner Track, a Netflix show based on the 2013 novel by Helen Wan, is trying to make an interesting point. A series centered on Ingrid Yun (Arden Cho), a senior associate attempting to become partner at a corporate law firm in New York City, the show offers important commentary about the sexism and racism that women and people of color face in ultra-white, ultra-male spaces.
That focus has been praised by some for its relatability. There are the moments when Ingrid’s colleagues take credit for her work, when they’re given better assignments simply because they have more social rapport with their boss, and when they’re elevated for mediocre performance when she’s the one putting in the time. In addition to the microaggressions the show captures, there are explicit acts of discrimination it spotlights, including a racist standup routine that one of the associates performs at a corporate retreat, the attempt to push out a Black employee who complains about it, and the decision to skip over Ingrid for one of the partner slots in favor of one of her significantly less-qualified male counterparts.
It’s still rare for a television show to center the perspective of an Asian American woman, and even more for viewers to experience biases that exist in the workplace through her eyes. Had the show committed to examining office disparities in a more thoughtful way, it could have been quite powerful. Instead, it takes a half-hearted approach to these issues and puts more emphasis on myriad other dramas.
At its heart, Partner Track is not a hard-hitting look at racial politics and microaggressions in the office. It’s mostly a glossy soap opera about kissing in business suits.
Still, much like its namesake novel, it’s trying to say something about the systems in place that prevent women and people of color from advancing in the workplace, and how even those marginalized by these structures are often keen to reinforce them. Partner Track fails to effectively do so because it doesn’t invest enough in that focus and gets side-tracked by everything else.
Partner Track has something to say about workplace inequities
Partner Track’s most compelling storylines take place at work, and they involve two main conflicts.
The first is a racist standup routine that’s performed by Dan Fallon (Nolan Gerard Funk), one of the white male associates at the law firm, during the company’s corporate retreat. Fallon, a glib and arrogant attorney who has generally fratty vibes, does a set mocking the idea of white fragility.
“Remember when we all used to call disclosures ‘opening the kimono’?” says Fallon. “If someone were to tell you that now that is both racist and sexist, or what I used to call, twice the spice, and you were to say something like, ‘But my college girlfriend was Japanese,’” that would be another prime example of, louder for the folks in the back: white fragility.”
While several members of the audience, including Ingrid and her friend Tyler (Bradley Gibson), who is Black, are appalled during the performance, most of the attorneys seem to find Fallon’s comments cringeworthy but entertaining. In the end, he walks off the stage to laughter and applause.
Tyler winds up leaving the event, while Ingrid confronts her boss, Marty (Matthew Rauch), who pledges to conduct an internal review. Though Human Resources concludes that Dan should be put on probation, management ultimately decides that he’ll get a slap on the wrist because his clients are too valuable to the company.
That conclusion is a breaking point for Tyler, but not Ingrid. In an attempt to test her commitment to the company, Marty sends Ingrid to offer her friend a $500,000 severance package if he keeps quiet about his concerns. It’s an assignment she takes on despite how wrong it is, and how big of a betrayal it is of their friendship. Her decision to do so is devastating; a clear illustration of how someone can become complicit in the very systems that oppress them if they believe those power structures will wind up rewarding them. In defense of herself, Ingrid frames the decision as “the hard choices that partners have to make.”
Ingrid’s devotion to making partner is the other throughline and conflict in the show. In addition to throwing her friend under the bus, Ingrid agrees to chair the firm’s diversity gala, an event where she’s effectively used as a prop to improve the company’s image. She’s made to read a prewritten speech about being a “proud Asian American female lawyer” who’s willing to downplay the firm’s recent shortcomings.
Separately, her prime work responsibility is a major energy acquisition deal, which she works tirelessly to complete, despite knowing it could have ruinous environmental consequences.
After running point and guaranteeing that the $2.5 billion deal goes off without a hitch, Ingrid and her colleagues widely expect her to be named as one of the three new partners in her division that year. In what feels like a slow-motion horror movie moment, she’s passed over when the announcement is made in favor of Jeff Murphy (Dominic Sherwood), the more junior associate on the same project. There’s no real logic to this decision as Murphy is repeatedly shown cutting corners on his work and leaving Ingrid to handle the most difficult tasks — not to mention sleeping with one of the firm’s clients. (A twist later on offers some insight to the slight but not enough to justify the decision.)
As Wan has said, the events she describes in the novel, many of which are also included in the television show, include some based on real-life experiences and are intended to raise awareness about the systemic problems at white-shoe law firms.
“I was not seeing any stories being written about believable, contemporary stories about — specifically Asian American professionals, not Asian professionals — who were trying to climb the corporate ladder. I was not seeing any realistic portrayals of that,” Wan said in a 2013 interview.
The environment and lack of diversity in Partner Track is very much a reflection of actual issues that many law firms have. Just 10 percent of all law firm partners are people of color, according to a 2020 survey by the National Association for Law Placement, which also found that Asian American attorneys make up 12 percent of the lawyers at the associate level, while Black attorneys make up 5 percent, and Latino attorneys make up 6 percent, with the latter two groups being especially underrepresented. White attorneys are nearly twice as likely to be hired as partners as members of other racial groups, according to the American Bar Association. The work culture at law firms has also been called out for its hostility to women and people of color, who can be tokenized on projects or given less prominent assignments.
Ingrid’s failure to get promoted to partner also speaks specifically to the barriers to advancement that Asian American people have encountered in the workforce, a phenomenon that’s been called the “bamboo ceiling.” According to a Harvard Business Review piece by business executives Buck Gee and Denise Peck, Asian Americans are the least likely group to be promoted into management. “They’re more than 10 percent of the graduates of the top 30 law schools — yet ‘have the highest attrition rates and lowest ratio of partners to associates among all [racial] groups,’” they write. Overall, Asian Americans comprise 13 percent of the professional workforce and only 6 percent of executives, per data from the Ascend Foundation.
This discrepancy between workforce participation and representation in management is attributed to the fact that Asian Americans have been perceived as good workers, but not “leadership material” due to longstanding stereotypes.
“I killed myself for that deal — it would have fallen apart multiple times if not for me,” Ingrid says after the partner announcement is made.
“There is more to making partner than just doing your job,” Marty replies. It’s a statement that ignores her over-the-top commitment to the work as well as the clearly extraneous tasks she’s taken on.
“You were never going to give it to me,” Ingrid realizes.
Partner Track’s point gets diluted by the rest of the drama
Despite some of the meaningful themes it addresses, the rest of the show dilutes its impact.
In particular, the romantic subplots are very time-consuming and don’t make much sense. Ingrid is forced to choose between Nick (Rob Heaps), a philosophical billionaire who rushes her into a proposal, and Murphy, her colleague who repeatedly fails to pull his weight, both of whom the show doesn’t offer much reason to be invested in.
Nick is ultimately boring and clearly framed as the loser, while Murphy is both a bad coworker and unkind (in their first encounter, he pretends to forget who Ingrid is after they previously hooked up at a wedding). Additionally, the whole set-up is yet another one where the Asian American female lead has predominantly white male love interests, reinforcing a trope that’s been evident on other shows like The Mindy Project and The Summer I Turned Pretty. (Some fans hope that Zi-Xin Min (Desmond Chiam), a hot eco-warrior type who was part of the energy deal, could become a potential love interest next season.)
Similarly, a conflict with Ingrid’s artsy younger sister, Lina (Lena Ahn), which could have been an interesting examination of sibling dynamics and family expectations, becomes so convoluted that any emotional heft from the story is lost. Ultimately, the show seems to be checking off the boxes it thinks would make for a successful drama, much in the way Ingrid does the tasks needed to become partner, without really developing or reflecting on these plot points.
Even Partner Track’s examination of workplace inequities, arguably its strongest suit, could have been more fleshed out. The show doesn’t truly grapple with how Ingrid screws Tyler over in order to advance her own ambitions. And it gives short shrift to a promising storyline looking at Ingrid’s relationship with April (Carrie Vu), a younger Asian American attorney who is her mentee.
Additionally, Partner Track isn’t up to the task of scrutinizing its characters’ own roles in a broken system. The show frames Ingrid and Tyler as collateral damage, but they’re actively helping perpetuate it. Each has their own redemption arc, but they also spend most of the series using their legal expertise to help corporations crush small businesses and protect entrenched industries like oil and gas. Their moral concerns are underwritten at best.
Billed as a soapier version of a legal drama, Partner Track has something new to say — but its execution falls short of clearly communicating what that is.
Voter suppression is real despite high voter turnout.
Since the beginning of 2021, dozens of states have enacted restrictive voting laws — legislation that limits how, where, and when voters can cast a ballot.
During the first two years of the pandemic, states expanded voting options, ushering in unprecedented access to the ballot via 24-hour voting, drive-through voting, mail-in ballots, ballot drop boxes, and other measures. But following Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020, the myth of voter fraud and a stolen election quickly spread. By May of 2022, nearly 400 restrictive bills had been introduced in legislatures nationwide.
In 2021, legislators in every state except Vermont introduced at least one provision restricting voting access, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks the legislation. Ultimately, by May 2022, 18 states had passed a total of 34 laws restricting voting.
An analysis by the Brennan Center’s voting rights program found that race and racial resentment, not only partisanship, play a part in the proliferation of these laws: legislative districts that scored higher on markers of racial resentment were more likely to be represented by legislators who introduced the restrictions. They were also more likely to be introduced by legislators from majority-white districts in diversifying states.
I talked to Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the Brennan Center’s voting rights programs, about their analysis, the connection between election subversion and voter suppression, and why there’s still hope that voting is powerful in our democracy.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Fabiola Cineas
What are the most glaring statistics about the vote suppression bills that have been introduced or adopted in the past two years or so?
Sean Morales-Doyle
At the Brennan Center we’ve been tracking every piece of voting rights legislation introduced in every state legislature across the country for more than a decade now.
Since the beginning of 2021 and as of our last roundup of the legislation in May 2022, 18 states have passed 34 new restrictive voting laws. 2021 was so extreme. If you look at the entire decade that we have been tracking this legislation, one out of every three restrictive laws was passed during that year.
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Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Fabiola Cineas
Are there patterns that emerge when you look at these laws together?
Sean Morales-Doyle
We’ve done a statistical analysis to figure out the patterns. We wanted to know what was predicting the introduction of this legislation. Is it just a partisan trend? Certainly, it is a partisan trend: One party by and large is responsible for distributing the legislation and the vast majority of it is introduced by Republican legislators. But we wanted to know what’s really going on here because we had a suspicion that perhaps it wasn’t that simple.
What we found is the legislators that represented the whitest districts of the most diverse states are the legislators most likely to introduce restrictive legislation. Similarly, legislators that represented districts with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to introduce the legislation. Those trends held true even after we controlled for party, even after we controlled for how competitive a district was.
Party definitely tells part of the story, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. This is also a story about race. That’s always been the case in this country, frankly. The fight over voting rights and the fight over our democracy has been a fight with race at its core. What this shows is that this continues to be the case even in this moment of hyper-partisan debate over voting rights. That story is consistent with a story of racial backlash.
Fabiola Cineas
Is there anecdotal evidence that supports these findings?
Sean Morales-Doyle
Yes. When Texas passed SB 1, it restricted all kinds of aspects of the voting system in a state that was already incredibly restrictive. And it targeted the methods that were used to expand access during the pandemic in Harris County, where Houston is. Harris County had 24-hour voting and drive-through voting available to voters at a time when people were scared to be gathered in polling places. Those are the forms of voting Texas decided to go after, in addition to many others — the forms of voting that voters in the largest, most diverse county of Texas were using.
Georgia has had an expanded mail voting system for a long time. It wasn’t until 2020 when who was voting by mail shifted dramatically and far more Black voters began voting by mail. Then in 2021, Georgia suddenly acted to put restrictions on mail voting. So that’s why the Department of Justice is suing Georgia over parts of that bill and claiming that it is intentionally racially discriminatory.
The larger statistical trend suggests that it is more than just anecdotal evidence.
I want to be clear: Our statistical analysis does not prove causation. We’re not claiming that for every single one of those bills we have proof that it was introduced for racially discriminatory reasons. But we think it’s telling that race seems to be such a good predictor of where these things are being introduced and that it is a predictor independent of, and above and beyond, party.
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Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Fabiola Cineas
Can you say more about how these laws fit into the general racial backlash we are seeing, whether that’s the backlash against critical race theory or the backlash against “wokeness”?
Sean Morales-Doyle
Restrictive voting legislation is just one way that we’ve seen racial backlash in our politics over the last couple of years. We saw in 2020 people of color, and, in particular, Black people, demonstrating political power in ways that they hadn’t before. They had a real powerful impact on the political conversation heading into the 2020 elections. We saw high voter turnout across the board, among everybody in 2020, but we had high voter turnout among populations of color and we saw that voters of color were often a deciding factor in a number of races around the country.
In the period that followed, we see laws that are attempting to limit the conversation about race, and a trend in restricting access to the political power of people of color. Those two things are connected. They’re part of the same trend.
Fabiola Cineas
And what about the “big lie,” the false idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump?
Sean Morales-Doyle
The lie is motivating so much of this legislation and the lie itself has racial undercurrents. We have research linking the lies and conspiracy theories that were told about the 2020 election to the legislation passed in 2021.
Fabiola Cineas
So you’ve seen all these patterns in which states pass these laws — what did you learn from the primaries this year about how these vote suppression laws operate and affect voters?
Sean Morales-Doyle
In Texas in the March primary, thousands of mail-in ballots were rejected because of a restrictive provision of SB 1 that said you have to put either your driver’s license number or the last four digits of your social security number on your mail ballot application.
That provision is a great example of how these restrictive provisions function in 2022. It’s not the blunt instrument of the Jim Crow era that sort of knocks out a huge swath of the electorate. (Sadly, there’s still examples of that, too, like the pay-to-vote requirements in Florida.) But there are these more nuanced restrictions, and it’s about layering restriction on top of restriction.
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Fabiola Cineas
How do these layered restrictions work to create a bigger system that limits voters?
Sean Morales-Doyle
Look at a state like Texas where there’s already extremely limited mail voting. You have to apply to vote by mail every year, and only certain people are eligible to vote by mail. They have no online voter registration, and no online mail ballot application process. They changed the law in 2021 to require you to put this ID number on your application; that ID number has to match what’s in your voter registration record.
So if you put down your driver’s license number and it turns out your voter registration record contains your social security number, your application is going to be rejected. If you put down your social security number, and it turns out your registration record has your driver’s license number, your application is going to be rejected. If you registered at a time when you didn’t have to put down either and your registration record doesn’t contain either then no matter what number you put down your application is going to be rejected.
If the county is using the old form, or if you have an old paper form because there’s no online application, and there’s not even a place to put down the number, then your application will be rejected. You have to use paper to fix the problem because there’s no online voter registration. You may not realize that until it’s late in the game.
The same law, SB 1, makes it a crime for election officials to encourage people to vote by mail. So election officials feel constrained in what they can actually affirmatively tell voters about filling out their application because they could be accused of committing a crime. So people are deprived of the information they need.
Fabiola Cineas
There’s been high voter turnout in 2022. How do you make sense of that alongside these vote restriction trends?
Sean Morales-Doyle
There’s been really high turnout in the 2022 primaries, and that’s fantastic. We celebrate that. We love to see people participating in our democracy. But it is important to keep in mind that you can’t evaluate the impact of any particular policy just by looking at the top-line turnout numbers.
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Emil Lippe/AP
Turnout relies on many factors. And there are a lot of reasons to expect high turnout for a midterm year this year. But it also doesn’t take much scratching below the surface to see that these high turnout numbers don’t tell the whole story.
We have seen for years now that the racial turnout gap in the United States is not only persistent, but it’s actually growing in many parts of the country. And it is growing in the parts of the country that used to be covered by preclearance on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Georgia had high turnout in the primary even after this omnibus restrictive voting law was adopted, but the racial turnout gap in Georgia’s primary was larger than it’s been in a decade.
Fabiola Cineas
How do you define the racial turnout gap?
Sean Morales-Doyle
It’s the gap between the percentage of registered white voters that turn out and the percentage of registered non-white voters that turn out. The gap we looked at in Georgia was specifically white versus Black turnout. But when you look at white versus non-white turnout — including other voters of color in that comparison — in many parts of the country, the gap is even wider. It is significantly wider for Latino voters and Asian American voters a lot of times.
Fabiola Cineas
I know you said we really don’t know what we will see in the general election come November in terms of how these vote suppression bills will play out. But what will you be keeping an eye on?
Sean Morales-Doyle
I don’t think any of us knows precisely what that impact of these laws will be. But what happened during the primaries in Texas makes me very worried.
And unlike in years past, the federal courts have signaled a retreat from the protection of voting rights. That doesn’t just include big blockbuster decisions like Shelby or Brnovich, but also includes this use of what’s called the “Purcell principle” to make it very difficult to get relief in advance of an upcoming election. The Supreme Court has basically said, “We’re not going to let federal courts step in to block state voting laws, even if a federal court finds them to be unconstitutional or a violation of the Voting Rights Act, if it’s too close to an election.” And “too close to an election” is not a very precise term. We saw the Supreme Court put a stay on a ruling out of Alabama in February because it’s “too close to the election.”
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Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Fabiola Cineas
It feels like the national conversation has shifted more toward thinking about the threat of election subversion and we are talking less about vote suppression. Is that a fair assessment? And how should we be thinking about the connection between these two threats?
Sean Morales-Doyle
Election subversion or sabotage is different than vote suppression. But they all have the same goal, which is to undermine the will of the people and to take power away from voters. They’re different sides of the same coin.
To oversimplify it, people love a conspiracy, so the idea of election sabotage and what happened on January 6 is a narrative that people can follow. But it isn’t actually a separate thing from the attempts to restrict access to voting. The same lie that was used to justify John Eastman and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the presidential election is the lie that is being used to justify restrictive voting legislation. It all comes from the same place and the goal is always the same. We do a disservice when we separate them out too much.
Fabiola Cineas
What kind of confidence can voters have that there is still a reason to vote in the face of all these potential roadblocks?
Sean Morales-Doyle
There are laws in place that will make it difficult and hopefully impossible for people to sabotage elections. There are laws against voter intimidation and harassment. There are laws protecting election officials from harassment and violence. There are laws that offer some protection against restrictions.
2020 should demonstrate to all of us that we have a resilient and strong democracy in this country, that in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of unprecedented attacks on our democracy, in the midst of people attempting to overturn the will of the people following the election and storming the nation’s capital, we carried off an election that was, by the account of the federal government, the most secure we’ve ever had.
We have institutions and rules in place that prevent the worst things from coming to fruition. I know I talk a lot about the threats, and I don’t want discussion of those threats to get voters to think that they shouldn’t be participating, shouldn’t trust the system, and that we should be scared. I think we do have reason to worry, and that’s why we’re going to be as vigilant as ever to push back against all of this nonsense. But voters should still feel confident in our democracy and should still go out and vote.