First Time Voter, First Time Loser
By Eric Duran-Valle
I was making a U-turn on Sahara Avenue when I got a frantic phone call from my mom about the election. Calmly, I explained there was no way that Donald Trump would even come close to winning. By precedent alone, it was impossible. He had never served in the military or public office, his rhetoric was obscene and unpresidential (whatever that means), and Hillary Clinton, while not many people’s favorite, was the obvious choice.
As a first-generation citizen, college student, and on that occasion, voter, I feel a certain responsibility to my family. While they always try to insist that I not worry about them, I can’t help it. Having grown up with opportunities and privileges they never had, there is a sense of obligation to take on agency where they can’t. After all, while not everyone gets to vote, everyone has to live with the results. In my eyes, it wasn’t just my name on that ballot. Through me, my mom, aunts, uncles, and grandparents were voting too.
On Tuesday, November 8, 2016, I would go to class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hang out with friends, and witness history as America elected its first woman president. I had already voted the Friday before and the process couldn’t have been easier. I stood in line for less than 10 minutes, transposed my sample ballot choices to the machine, snagged an “I Voted” sticker, and walked away with pride knowing I had now taken part in our country’s democracy.
However, despite my earlier assurance that Hillary would sweep the election, there was a growing miasma that Trump could win. As the November afternoon transformed into night, my friends and I meandered around campus. We were waiting for the results to come in, but perhaps also trying to find someplace where the bad air wasn’t. But it only kept getting thicker and heavier.
Back at Lied Library, where not long before I had felt excited about my vote, we came across another friend sitting at a computer. She was studying, or at least she was until she started looking at the election results. Clinton’s comeback to Trump’s early lead turned out to not have much steam at all. As Trump gained electoral votes, Hillary stagnated.
After a bite at In-N-Out Burger, my friend, a social studies education major, said the swing states just needed to stay blue, and everything would be fine. Unable to resist the urge, I searched the real-time results on my phone. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio had all turned red. My friend threw up his hands and jokingly stormed away, but we all seemed to take that as a sign that the party was over and went our separate ways. During the car ride home, Donald Trump crossed the threshold of 270 electoral votes, making him the 46th President of the United States while losing the popular vote.
Not everyone sees voting with the same weight. For some, the occupant of the White House is irrelevant to daily life. I heard this from my own friends who voted for Donald Trump. But like many aspects of our society, the effects of our government’s actions are not felt equally, and the worst is usually passed down to those who can withstand the least.
I was extremely worried about my family. Mexican immigrants were among the main targets of Trump’s vitriol. I saw my vote as a way to protect the people I loved, but now it seemed like a futile and pointless action.
The 2016 election, for many young people, was a major loss of morale. How could the systems fail in such an atrocious fashion? The systems we had been taught were supposed to prevent this sort of outcome. How could people be so lacking in empathy?
However, just because the candidate you chose didn’t win doesn’t mean your vote didn’t matter. In the same election, Nevada elected not only its first female senator, but also the first-ever Latina United States Senator, Catherine Cortez-Masto. This was just one of many steps forward for diversity in politics across the country.
The most important lesson was that, despite what a cynical uncle or an election forecaster might say, nothing is “fixed” in politics. In a strange way, witnessing Donald Trump’s election proved that. Voting is not easy. We can’t stay home because our preferred choice has better odds. The right to vote is a powerful weapon, otherwise so many ill-intentioned groups would not be focused on trying to take that right away.
Eric Duran-Valle is an emerging writer from Las Vegas. He writes both fiction and nonfiction about the changing culture of southern Nevada’s community through the lens of a lifelong resident. He is currently part of the communications department at Vegas PBS, where he manages the station's social media accounts and writes copy for the bi-weekly newsletter. The most valuable thing he owns is a framed print of the old Stardust Resort and Casino, which was imploded on March 13, 2007. He earned his BA in English from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2020.