By John Mecklin, November 1, 2024
It’s become a social media sport to mock citizens who have not yet made up their minds on how to vote in this year’s US presidential election, especially if they say they need “more information” before making their choice. The needling is valid, to a point; after all, Kamala Harris has been vice president for the last 3.75 years, and Donald Trump was president for the preceding four. Google the two names; “insufficient information” won’t be the first search return, I promise you.
Still, many people (including, apparently, a few of the editors who work for me) need deadlines to focus their decision-making, and Election Day is one effective incentivizer. Don’t believe me? In the 2020 US presidential election, in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, 27 percent of voters cast their ballots in person on Election Day, even though standing in line to vote could actually have cost them their lives.
So if you are an American citizen waiting for the deadline of Election Day to impel you to make a decision in this year’s presidential race, I have a few suggestions on how you might profitably spend your time between now and then. Because you’re reading the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, I will assume you’re probably somewhat concerned about avoiding global catastrophes caused by nuclear weapons and climate change (along with a variety of disruptive technologies, including artificial intelligence and potentially dangerous advances in genetic editing, that could also come to endanger civilization in coming decades).
Over the last several months, the Bulletin’s writers and editors have presented a substantive but also accessible package of coverage that parses the election in terms of existential threats, and how they might be diminished and managed. The following is a collection of pieces from that coverage, carefully curated for the benefit of Americans and concerned citizens around the world who have limited reading time between now and Election Day.
An existential timeline of the Trump/Pence and Biden/Harris presidencies
As Kamala Harris and Donald Trump reach their presidential campaign endgames, the Bulletin‘s editors look back at how the last two US administrations handled the world’s most dangerous threats.
An interactive multimedia presentation by five Bulletin editors.
How demagogues destroy democracy: a step-by-step global guide
Today’s demagogues are the harbingers of a new, 21st-century form of despotism: a corrupted, “phantom democracy” in which periodic elections are held but the rich become super-rich and omnipotent—while most of the populace is gripped by feelings of powerlessness.
By John Keane, a professor of politics at the University of Sydney, Australia, and author of multiple books on despotism.
On November 5, AI is also on the ballot
The 2024 election will decide if America leads or retreats from its crucial role in ensuring that artificial intelligence develops in alignment with democratic values.
By Ali Nouri, a lecturer at Princeton University who was formerly a deputy assistant to President Biden.
Project 2025: The right-wing conspiracy to torpedo global climate action
The GOP threatens to weaponize a potential second Trump term against any and all domestic climate action. But what happens in the United States doesn’t stay in the United States.
By Michael E. Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainabiliity, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war
Trump’s policy agenda if elected—Project 2025—would push the United States into an expensive, dangerous, and destabilizing nuclear confrontation unseen since the darkest days of the Cold War.
By Joe Cirincione, a longtime nuclear policy analyst.
Trump says he’d disband the pandemic preparedness office—again
Donald Trump claimed he would disband the White House office charged with preventing and responding to pandemics. It’s not the first time.
By Erik English, associate multimedia editor at the Bulletin.
Those who have more reading time between now and November 5, 2024, might also take a look at all the stories in the September issue of our bimonthly magazine, “How to Protect Elections and Democracy in a Critical Political Year.” The issue offers 10 articles that present election information you won’t find elsewhere or won’t find presented in the existential threat framework that the Bulletin specializes in, and that other media outlets tend to underplay. Even more ambitious voter-readers might take a look at this collection page, which acts as an archive for all our 2024 election-related stories.
Finally, there is one satirical piece that did not appear in the Bulletin but will, I suspect, make you laugh, even in these last tense days before the Tuesday presidential election. Depending on your political leanings, you may laugh heartily, ruefully, bitterly, or even angrily, but, I predict, laugh you will. Enjoy it, Election Day, and all other benefits and obligations that democracy confers. Long may it last, in the United States and around the world.
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