November 3, 2020

13 Ways to Pass the Time on Election Day

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As a wise Florida man (Tom Petty) once said, the waiting is the hardest part. Here are some activities to keep you busy until election results start to roll in.

  • Scroll through Twitter. A lot of people there have a lot of opinions, but no one actually knows anything. Getting your blood boiling is a nice way to pass the time.
  • Buy a sandwich, or better yet, make one yourself. It is, after all, National Sandwich Day. Vote in our Recharge sandwich poll about whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
  • Go grocery shopping. It’s prudent to have your pantry stocked in the event of civil unrest. Just kidding! But you’re going to want to have a bottle of vodka in your freezer no matter what. Or Kentucky bourbon—it’s more American.
  • Open a book. Stare at the page for a few minutes before turning on the TV.
  • Head for the mountains and live off the grid. Make no plans to return.
  • Engage in whatever petty fights you’ve been putting off. The cable company charged you twice, but you haven’t gotten around to having them fix it? Now’s the time to listen to that horrible music while you wait on hold.
  • What do people you went to high school with look like now? Check Facebook to find out.
  • Throw bread into an open body of water.
  • Might I interest you in Wikipedia?
  • Sit outside while you wait for Sun-In hair lightener to work its magic on your soon-to-be-golden locks. Try not to think about the absurdity that such a warm sunny day should fall on a Tuesday in November. Let the phrases “human-caused climate change” and “catastrophic environmental collapse” nestle themselves deep in your subconscious, to emerge only when a wildfire starts lapping at your front lawn.
  • Start drafting your submission for Shouts & Murmurs. You really have a shot this time.
  • Oh, yeah, maybe vote, if you haven’t already. Today would be a good day to do that.
  • Have Mother Jones’ 2020 election blog open in another tab; we’ll be feeding you all the updates you need to know.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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