Beware False Endings
At a time when uncertainty may be the election’s only immediate result, Americans have an opportunity to rethink the way stories are told.
Earlier this week, a striking thing happened at the Supreme Court: A justice inserted several errors into the record. The mistakes came as the Court was making last-minute decisions about the precise time span of an election that has been taking place for weeks. The errors were products, as The New York Times put it, of “the court’s fast pace in handling recent challenges to voting rules.” They also emphasized the extent to which the election is being waged through proxy campaigns—through battles that treat voting not just as the voice of the public, but also as a matter of logistics. How will votes be processed? How will they be, right out in the open, suppressed? When will they stop being counted?
And when will
