FINALLY! After being stuck to the TV and to different social media platforms for four straight days, the US elections ended and our eyes finally got some rest.
On November third, the 59th United States presidential election took place. The two main candidates, who undoubtedly became rivals to each other, were Donald J. Trump from the Republican Party, who was elected as a president in 2016 and was running for reelection in 2020, and Joe Biden, the nominee of the Democratic Party, who was known for his vice-presidency of the former President Barack Obama.
Because of the pandemic, the Americans had one of the two ways they could choose to vote. First, as usual, going into the state’s section and voting there and the second one was by the mail-in ballots. Not only Americans, but the whole world was seeing only blue (for Joe Biden’s Democratic party) and red (for Trump’s Republicans) on social media platforms, watching the US map, where states would change colours, from one to another. On November seventh, after a long wait for votes to be counted in contested states such as Pennsylvania and Nevada, the historical 2020 election finally ended and Joe Biden was elected as the 46th president of the United States of America, along with Kamala Harris as the first female vice-president.
As most GZAAT students were really interested in the 2020 US elections, they were asked about their thoughts on the US electoral college system. Tenth grader Ketu Gugushvili, who is a Biden supporter, says that she was not surprised that the counting lasted that long, because she was sure that Trump would try to invalidate some mail-in ballot votes: “On the second day of counting, when most of the states in which counting wasn’t over, were leaning red I got scared. Then I read that they were leaning red because in those states counting mail-in ballot votes wasn’t even started. It gave me so much hope because the mail-in ballot votes are mostly from democrats, as a majority of Republicans prefer to vote in person. Trump also claimed that Biden stole the election and said it was because there were not many votes for him from mail-in ballots. It was ironic because before the election he said to his supporters to vote in person and not by mail. Overall the election was very intense and I’m extremely happy that Biden won.”
Freshman Giorgi Kakhiani says that things and rumours about Trump did not reflect his presidency throughout the whole time: “The characteristics that were really reflected was that Trump is a radical and confident president specialized in economics, with a strong sense of business. That is what makes him a good president. There are some famous public figures that I consider as one of my favourite politicians at this time, like vice president Mike Pence and secretary of state and former director of CIA, Mike Pompeo. In my opinion, after years of the vice presidency of Richard Nixon, Mike Pence is the best vice president of the United States. Which we can not say about the previous vice president and recently elected president, Joe Biden. Pence had a big part in the progress of the USA in the later years. He has staffed most of the federal government, took the lead on rebuilding the nation’s space program and many more.”
Eighth-grader Taisia Kurdghelia was expecting Biden to win the election from the beginning because during Trump's presidency, he lost many supporters, especially by ignoring and worsening social problems: “I am really happy about Biden’s presidency, because I am satisfied with his excellent past work with the former president Barack Obama. Elementary human rights were violated during Trump's presidency, and injustice was restored in America. Hopefully, the next president will rectify this.”
Sophomore Temo Kikava claims that in this election Trump was the best choice
for the position of president of the United States: “I think that Trump would have been reelected if it was not for the media. They are very biased towards him, they made fake news about him all the time and misinterpreted his words to make it seem like he is some sort of a
“bad guy”, when in reality he is not. When I spoke to some Biden supporters, I noticed that most of them do not even like him. He has been in politics for forty-seven years and people are only hearing from him now. He has been a vice president for eight years, yet none of the people I talked to seemed to know that he was on that post. The democrats started using mail-in ballots as an excuse, as they could not physically vote because of Covid-19. Now, these mail-in ballots cause a huge controversy, whether they are fraudulent or not, for which Trump is putting out many lawsuits. While the democrats used Covid as an excuse to not vote physically, now they are seen dancing and celebrating Biden’s victory on the streets. Aren't they afraid of Covid-19 anymore?”
Well, it seems like the thoughts of the students on this topic are contrasting and it looks like GZAAT has many amazing political critics coming in the future!
Edited by: Keta Tavartkiladze
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