The downside of seeing election results trickle in

At the end of a long election week, with the counting still not over in a number of states, a story idea came in that, as the Quaker phrase has it, spoke to our condition. University of Pittsburgh political scientist Kristin Kanthak wrote to ask if we wanted a “clear and straightforward explainer on how mail-in votes are delivered and counted.” We sure did.

Kanthak compares watching the vote count change in real time – as millions of Americans have done this week – with her recent grading of an online exam. It turns out she didn’t realize her students could actually see their grades moving up and down online as she was working on their tests. And it made them frantic. “A lot of transparency with very little context is more nerve-wracking than it is helpful,” she writes.

Does that sound familiar?

This week we also liked articles about how to remain calm despite today’s uncertainty, how many Americans see their political participation as a religious duty and the record level of LGBTQ candidates on the ballot in 2020.