if you aren't interested in the political part of this blog post, you can skip to the good part
Last night was election night in the United States, and it felt... different.
When I was younger, election night meant sitting in front of the TV, and coloring in a map based on what they announced every 30 minutes. And I never got to see the map completely colored in, because my bedtime would be 8. I knew there was Obama, but not the other person.
2016 was the first election where I kind of knew what was happening. I knew what candidate I wanted and didn't want, but I didn't know anything about them. I was at the age where people around me were starting to voice their political opinions, unaware that they didn't actually have any. Because we were all kids, we didn't have any actual opinions, we just copied the opinions of our parents. It's like sports. In Michigan, we have the Michigan vs. Michigan State debate. If you ask someone what team they like and why, chances are they'll choose the one their parents like.
2020 was the first time I knew what was happening. I actually knew when election day was happening in advance. I had made my own choice of candidate. And I watched the election live for some time. However, I eventually went to bed, as I was certain I knew Joe Biden was going to win. And I woke up correct.
2024 is my first time voting, and this was a big election. It started off with Joe Biden dropping out of the election, being replaced with Kamala Harris. Kamala was much more liked than Biden, so people started getting hope. Plus, Kamala had a marketing strategy that appealed greatly to young kids. You can't embed slideshows from TikTok onto other websites yet, so you're just going to have to click this link. But the biggest threat was Project 2025. Project 2025 is a really complex topic that I don't think I'm qualified enough to explain here, as I don't want to accidentally spread misinformation. If you're unaware, please do research on it.
So... election day came. And this election day was different. Not just because of the stakes, but because of the technology.
Dynamic Island
You thought this was going to be a deep political article, but nope, its another rant about Apple.
In iOS 16, Apple introduced Live Activities. Live Activities allow apps to put information on your lock screen inside a little widget, instead of sending a bunch of notifications. This is useful for things like live sports scores, delivery apps, and probably something else. If you have an iPhone 16 Pro or newer, these live activities appear in the "dynamic island", which basically means inside of the notch. This way, you can always check on your activities. Additionally, these appear on your Apple Watch starting in watchOS 11.
The problem is that most apps that I use don't support this feature. And honestly, I don't need them to. Live Activities to me are those things that appear during sport matches and if I close Instagram while a story is being uploaded.
Seeing this new technology, Apple decided to use it for the upcoming election. If you had the Apple News app, you could opt into having a Live Activity showing election results directly on your lock screen and dynamic island. It could even buzz you whenever something happened. This seemed like a cool idea, and it was, until you start realizing how stressful this election would become.
It Begins
I decided to opt into this, because I don't know. I thought it would be cool, and I love messing with little pieces of technology. This surely won't have any negative repercussions, right? I think nobody gave a better thought about this than cyle from Tumblr:
Now, I would like to note some things. I have an iPhone 11, an iPhone 12 mini that's locked on AT&T (please pass the phone unlocking bill sooner FCC), and an Apple Watch Series 9. However, I used Nugget to "mod" unsupported features onto the 12, including the dynamic island and always on display.
Anyways, nothing really happened, until 6:00 PM, when a little widget appeared on my watch. There was a portrait of Kamala Harris on one side, and a portrait of Donald Trump on the other side. Right by each of the two was a number, 0 for both. This meant one thing, the election was starting. On the iPhone, the lock screen widget contained a little more information. You could also see the current status of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The dynamic island widget was the same as what was seen on the watch.
This (obviously) wasn't the only way to get information about the election. You could still choose to open the Apple News app to see the same widget, and tap into it to see a map, live updates, headlines, and more. But I think the way most people got the updates was through just Googling "election results". Google had a nifty (and buggy) interface that worked. They even tried grandma-proofing the interface by giving context menus a "close" button (usually you just click or tap outside the menu). One person on BlueSky watched the election through Perplexity, an AI search engine, apparently as a joke.
Most people aren't tuning into the news anymore, and the people that are tuning in do so through YouTube or the official website of the streamer. However, everyone is still getting the information at the same time, so it still feels like something everyone is witnessing together. Man, sometimes I hate knowing that someone is doing the same thing as me, but at the same time it's a comforting feeling.
Once the widget, appeared, I was just a little like "cool". It wasn't until the numbers on it changed that I started to realize "oh, this is actually happening".
It's Happening
Whenever it was confirmed that a candidate got a state, your default notification sound would play, and the widget would become more compact for a minute to show a headline. The thing is that the numbers would usually be updated minutes before the states were confirmed, so the news flashes became a little useless. They would also go off on the watch, but they wouldn't show you what changed or any headlines. This combined with the late alerts really didn't help the feature.
Every half hour I would await to see what changes there were, occasionally checking into the full map to see what was new. But as the election went on, I started to realize something. This didn't really feel like an election anymore, it felt like a sports game with really high stakes. Granted, points are the way the president is decided, and I don't know a better way to show the progress. But I'm used to seeing sport scores at the top of my screen, so seeing something completely different but in the same format was just... weird.
As the election went on, I noticed I started becoming increasingly jumpy at my notification sound. I was becoming more and more stressed about this election, unable to really focus. So... I decided to take a break from it. But here's the thing, the dynamic island is persistent across apps. So even if I opened another app, the score would still be visible at the top of my screen at all times. Granted, because I modded my phone the physical notch was blocking the numbers, so I couldn't actually really see the score. And, yes, you could hide it, but it just pops back up again whenever something happens.
You couldn't escape this "scoreboard". If I go for a walk, it pops up on my watch whenever the results change. If I go to every website, it's somehow there. You would see the live election map in between scrolls on TikTok videos. You would see it on your YouTube homepage. Your printer wouldn't start automatically printing the results, but if it did that wouldn't affect me because my printer is broken. I have this feature disabled so I have no evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if Windows showed the score in taskbar, where weather is usually displayed.
The thing that really hit the hardest was seeing all of the messages on various social networking services. So many people worrying about their future, whether they would have to leave the country, and so many women realizing their entire rights were on the line. Keep in mind, it's either someone who transparently wants to become a dictator (that has multiple felons) or a female president.
You could turn these off, but there was such a sense of panic and FOMO that it became hard to turn it off. I need to know what's happening now so I can spend more time panicking. And that's exactly what I did. I was up until after 12 just watching. The most unsettling part was at 12. Everything happened at either :30 or :00, and the polls were getting close. But at 12:00 AM and PM I have my phone set to play a creepy pendulum sound from an old version of Android. And just something about hearing it just sent shivers down my spine and whole body.
Another thing was my ringtone. I kept hearing it so much that I started becoming jumpy from it, as I knew it would mean something was changing. It ended up getting so bad that I had to change it once the election was over. I now also think of the election whenever I see the colors red and blue, which isn't good because that's the whole theme of my website. Why do the colors I like have to be so unintentionally patriotic?
Anyway, I eventually decided that there is no use staying up. I'm not going to change anything, and I'm just stressing myself out. Plus, nothing ever happens. So, I put my phone in sleep mode and went to bed, expecting everything to be fine once I woke up. Things were not fine, as Trump won.
Hey Apple
So, Apple, when the next election comes around, please never give us that widget again. It didn't help people become more aware of the election, it almost certainly caused stress. So many other news apps offered a similar service, so the option was still there for people who wanted it. But don't put it on an app built into the operating system.
Where to go from here? I don't know. Nothing ever happens, but will that remain true? Not only did Trump win the electoral college, but he also won the popular vote, so there is no getting around this. As for if his policies are actually going to be implemented, or if everything will fail, only time will tell. But I cannot blame anybody for panicking. Please, stay safe.