By Gurjot Kang
After eight years, Democrats gained a majority over Republicans, flipping the House of Representatives this past midterm election cycle.
Meanwhile, Republicans maintained control over the Senate, occupying 52 seats. However, some seats in Congress have yet to be accounted for, like in the state of Mississippi where a Senate runoff race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy is scheduled for November 27.
The aftermath of the 2018 midterm elections left us with a divided Congress, but what does this tell us about the direction our country might be headed over the next two years?
“It’s very significant that the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. That matters a lot essentially. They have veto power now over any legislation that Donald Trump would want to pass and they also have the ability to engage in countless investigations over the next couple of years,” said PLU Political Science Professor, Michael Artime. “We won’t fully understand the implication of what happened until we start learning more information that comes out as a by-product of these investigations.”
However, the issue of gridlock in Congress is likely not going away anytime soon.
“It was already pretty difficult for the Trump administration to pass big signature pieces of legislation,” said Artime. “By the same token, Democrats, while gaining the House was important to them, they still don’t have enough control of the legislature to pass meaningful legislation without bipartisan support either.”
With control of the Senate, the GOP still has the ability to confirm executive positions and lower and supreme court justices.
This election also saw historic wins and strides towards greater representation in government with a record number of 123 women set to serve in the 116th United States Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
Amongst those elected into the U.S. House were the first ever Native American female representatives, Democrat Sharice Davids who won Kansas’ Third Congressional District and Democrat Deb Haaland who won New Mexico’s First Congressional District.
Additionally, this election cycle we saw the first Muslim American women elected into the House with the historic wins of Democrat Rashida Tlaib in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District and Democrat Ilhan Omar in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.
This midterms, we elected the youngest female representative in history to the House, 29 year-old Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Other historic wins included Colorado’s gubernatorial race that led to the election of Democrat Rep. Jared Polis to serve as the first openly gay male governor in U.S. History
Many more firsts occurred on the state level, such as the state of Texas electing its first Hispanic Congresswomen, Democrats Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia, to the U.S. House of Representatives.
There were also many interesting state initiatives and amendments passed this election cycle with the state of Michigan legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and the states of Missouri and Utah legalizing medical marijuana.
Florida restored the right to vote for over a million ex-felons with the state’s Amendment Four. This amendment does not apply to those convicted of murder or criminal sex offenses.
The passage of this amendment is projected to significantly affect the African American voting population in Florida, which has been historically disenfranchised with Florida’s previous voting policy for ex-felons. For example, based off 2016 data from the Sentencing Project, this has the potential to impact the over 418,000 African American voters, 17.9% of the African American voting population in Florida, who were previously barred from voting as a result of past felony convictions.
This election also saw young voters, ages 18 to 29, turnout in record numbers for the 2018 midterms in comparison to no other midterms in the last 25 years. Estimates from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) indicate that around 31% of potential young voters casted their ballots this election—a 10% increase from the 21% who voted in the last 2014 midterms. Some of these young people who really showed up this past election cycle were Lutes on-campus.
“From a nonpartisan point of view, I am super excited about the youth turnout,” said Riley Dolan, ASPLU Civic Engagement Director and Lute Vote Coordinator. “We really showed up as young people.”
As part of a state-wide competition to get young people registered to vote across college campuses, Lute Vote registered over 200 people to vote through paper registration forms and got 946 “pledge-to-vote” cards from students, 113 of which were out-of-state. Moreover, around 172 ballots were received from Lutes through concierge and Lute Vote Ballot Drop-off parties.
Dolan was also recently featured in a Seattle Times Article titled, “Will millennials care enough to vote, or ‘go play softball or something’?” where his perspectives on young people voting were contrasted with the perspectives of Frank Schneider, a 90 year-old veteran and Trump Supporter, both of whom have voted in practically every election they’ve been eligible for.
“When young people aren’t sharing our voices, we are letting others speak for us and a lot of the time other generations don’t have the same values that our generation has,” said Dolan.
There are currently a lot of stereotypes surrounding young voters. Dolan addressed some of these concerns.
“Something that gets thrown around a lot is that young people don’t care or are ignorant, and I think both of those aren’t true. There are a million factors that contribute to young people not voting but I definitely don’t think those are legitimate reasons,” said Dolan. “Young people care extremely about these issues. College is where so many of these activism movements throughout history have started or been continued.”
As some of the systematic barriers between young people voting are removed, Dolan believes we will see young people continue to vote at higher and higher numbers over the years.
In the Seattle Times article, regarding young people voting, Schneider mentioned how he thinks maybe voting isn’t that important to young people and “maybe they’d rather got play softball or something.”
For Dolan, if he had to choose between softball or voting, the answer is simple.
“Voting, a 100 percent,” laughed Dolan. “But softball, it’s a good second place.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated (11/26) to reflect the latest election results.
