Hopefully, you voted on Tuesday. Hopefully, you got to bed at a reasonable time. I stayed up far too late, compulsively refreshing election returns from CNN and The New York Times. I became deeply familiar with the Texas county map and cheered when polls in Atlanta were forced to stay open three hours later than originally scheduled. In Wednesday’s proverbial cold light of day, pundits nationwide looked for a unifying narrative to the midterms or an answer to the question of What does it mean? I don’t have that for you – and honestly I don’t think they really do either – but I will offer a couple of reflections.

Celebrate the wins

Over and over again, we’ve heard this would be the year of the woman. Record breaking numbers of female candidates won and now more than 100 women will represent their constituents in the House of Representatives. Among the ‘pink wave’, some stories stand out:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Abby Finkenaur of Iowa are the youngest women to be elected to Congress. Both are 29 years old.

• Ayanna Pressley will be the first Black congresswoman from the state of Massachusetts.

• Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland are the first Native American women to be elected to Congress. Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, represents New Mexico while Davids, whose campaign says that she is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is from Kansas.

• Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, both representing Minnesota, are the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. Omar is also the first Somali-American member of Congress.

If these women prove anything, it’s the critical importance of representation. In that vein, several states made important gains toward more universal voting rights and protections, which means a more representative and equitable democracy for us all. Notably:

• Florida passed Amendment 4, which means that voting rights will be restored to felons who complete their sentences. Passing this amendment means that 1.5 million Floridians will once again be allowed to vote. That also means that 40% of all Black men in the state of Florida became eligible to vote.

• Voter rights and protections were on the ballots in Maryland, Michigan, and Nevada all of which have now approved measures such as same day voter registration or automatic voter registration.

• Kris Kobach, relentless birther and brief head of Trump’s voter fraud commission, lost the governor’s race in Kansas.

Finally, the midterms were evidence of not only movement toward equality for but also expanded protections of LGBTQ individuals:

• Massachusetts voted yes on Question 3, which means that voters upheld a 2016 law protecting transgender people from discrimination based on gender identity. This is the first state to extend civil rights to transgender individuals; currently, even federal law does not prohibit gender identity discrimination.

• Jared Polis, an openly gay man, won the governor’s race in Colorado. Polis made no secret of his sexual orientation and his public appearances often included his husband and their two children.

• Several other House reps will be among what CNN commentator Van Jones has termed the rainbow wave: Sharice Davids (mentioned above) of Kansas and Angie Craig of Minnesota both identify as lesbians and New Hampshire rep Chris Pappas identifies as gay.

Continue to work

The country is still divided. This means there is still ample work to be done across all dimensions of equity, including race, class, and gender.

• Despite the many victories experienced by women in this election cycle, women’s rights will continue to be endangered. Specifically, both West Virginia and Alabama passed in their state constitutions anti-abortion amendments. This means that a woman’s right to choose in not only in jeopardy in these states, but cases that originate in these states are likely to eventually find their way to the Supreme Court.

Similarly, some states upheld or approved measures which make it harder to vote.

• Arkansas and North Carolina both passed laws requiring potential voters to present photo identification in order to vote. These kinds of laws have been shown to disproportionately disenfranchise urban, minority, and poor individuals.

• North Dakota attempted to prevent individuals from voting who did not have a residential address. This excluded a large number of Native Americans who live on reservations, who typically have post office boxes.

• Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp authorized the clearing of thousands of names from the voter rolls despite the fact that he is also a gubernatorial candidate and the cleared names were overwhelmingly likely to be Black individuals in urban areas of the state. As if that weren’t sufficiently bad, some Georgians waited hours to vote due to insufficient numbers of voting machines, inoperable or faulty voting machines, or other technical errors.

At the time of this blog’s publication, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams still had not conceded the election. We #standwithStacey and will be eagerly watching to see if the race results in a runoff.  

For the first time in recent political history – or our recent memory – there are some clear victories. However, we know there’s a lot left to do. At AEC, we’re committed to equity in all sectors and, even after a late night and West Wing level electoral obsessions, we’re back to work today.