WASHINGTON—According to widespread reports, roughly 314 million Americans across the country have been left without any power following Tuesday’s devastating presidential election.
As many struggle to cope amidst the continued outage, experts have predicted that due to the severity of the presidential contest, which cut a wide swath of carnage throughout the entire United States, it’s very possible that power won’t be fully restored to the general public for at least another four years, if ever.
“By our estimates, power is out in roughly 150 million homes throughout the country, and many residents—especially the poor, the middle class, and ethnic minorities—will have no power for a long, long time,” said Cornell University political scientist Dr. Paul Kucharski, adding that the power infrastructure, which was originally put in place in 1789, has become increasingly problematic and unreliable over the past 200 years. “Given that we have an outdated system that is so prone to failure, an outage of this magnitude was inevitable.”
“At this point,” he continued, “with the number of citizens whose lives have been completely devastated by this election, I think it’s fairly clear that the whole system needs a complete overhaul.”
Reports of sweeping power failures began surfacing Tuesday in the late evening, with the election wreaking havoc across the entire Eastern Seaboard, first knocking out power in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. As more and more results came in and the election grew in intensity, power outages were eventually reported in Pennsylvania, in Indiana, and stretching as far west as Colorado and California.
By approximately 11 p.m., power had reportedly been cut off to all states, including Alaska and Hawaii.
“I was watching the returns on television, they called a winner in my state, and then I was just totally without power,” said 35-year-old Dalton, GA resident Chris Orloff, adding that the election has left him totally in the dark and with no one to turn to. “Even though we were warned the election was going to happen on Nov. 6, there was just no way to avoid this thing.”
“I thought it would be bad, but I honestly didn’t think it would be this bad.” Orloff added. “Best thing to do now is hunker down with my family and get used to not having power for a while.”
According to sources, the power outage has left millions without access to proper health care, adequate shelter, and basic goods and services. Moreover, public school officials said that if the power loss continues—as it is expected to for the foreseeable future—it will be impossible to continue educating students.
Many in the medical community told reporters that the harmful elections and resulting loss of power could lead to a record number of deaths.
Though a majority of Americans said the outage has left them scared and helpless, some were angered, arguing that as taxpayers, they deserve access to power. Others remarked they have simply gotten used to the unstable, highly unreliable electoral system and its long history of knocking out power to citizens when they need it most.
“Unfortunately, we lose power around here all the time,” said Florida-based marketing consultant Erika Lloyd, explaining that she endured a much more crippling power failure in 2000. “Any time an election happens, even if it’s a small, statewide one, our power goes out immediately after the ballots are counted.”
With no end to the crisis in sight, Americans have expressed growing frustration, complaining that they feel completely abandoned by those they rely on to provide them with power.
“People always come around here every three or four years talking about how they’re going to repair the system and restore our power, but then another election happens and it just gets worse,” said 58-year-old mechanic John Rhodes, who, along with other tenants in his government-subsidized housing complex in Camden, NJ, has been living without power for more than four decades. “I mean, look around you. Does it seem like any of the power issues have been addressed here?”
At press time, the roughly 5,000 Americans who maintained their power after the election, and remained untouched by its effects, were reportedly sitting comfortably in their fully furnished, 15-room homes.
