The 2020 election is reaching its dramatic conclusion, and the world is watching to see which old white man America picks next.

The election was not the Blue Wave that Democrats hoped for, but it is still extremely close, with no definitive victor emerging on either side as of now.

But before we get to analysis, we must make sure to count every single vote. That is the basis of our democracy, the meaning of America and the center of what the founding fathers fought for when they dreamed up the United States so many years ago.

As expected, Trump declared victory early anyway in an election speech that was widely denounced by everyone from Ben Shapiro to George Takei.

“No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say he has,” tweeted Shapiro early Wednesday morning.

“GOP leaders: Now would be a good time to grow a backbone and denounce Trump’s early claim of victory when there are millions of votes still to be counted in hotly contested states,” wrote Takei.

The Trump campaign is also apparently running active Facebook ads implying he won the election, despite the website’s declaration that it would ban political ads after the election.

Now, people from across party lines are demanding that every vote be counted.

“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Trump. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’ clock in the morning and add them to the list, ok?”

Mail-in absentee ballots are currently still being counted. As of noon on Wednesday, around half of Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots have been counted, and 200,000 ballots remain to be counted in Georgia. 80,000 Michigan ballots remain, and around 400,000 remain in Arizona.

But the GOP is attempting to stymie ballot counts. In Pennsylvania, Republican lawmakers attempted to discount votes from a Pennsylvania county that allowed voters who filled out their ballots incorrectly to “cure” or fix them. People who forgot to put ballots in specific envelopes, for example, would have had their votes ignored if they hadn’t been able to fix their ballots.

A Pennsylvania judge met the attempt with a “skeptical” reception, according to Politico. Back in October, the Supreme Court ruled 4:4 that election officials must accept ballots that arrive 3 days after the election (five votes are needed to grant a stay, which bodes badly, since Amy Coney Barrett is now on the court).

Joe Biden and Donald Trump remain stunningly neck-and-neck across the nation. Before the election, many feared Trump might attempt to claim an early victory, especially if he appeared to be winning before all the ballots were counted.

Now, people around the country are preparing to take nonviolent action to demand that every single vote is counted. The Protect the Results coalition will be hosting peaceful marches around the country, and groups are prepared to strike (all nonviolently, to be clear for the riot-fearers among us) should corruption succeed.

The division between Trump voters and Biden voters may feel unbridgeable, but almost everyone agrees: We want to preserve our great democracy. Democracy relies on every single vote being counted; and this year, when millions of people voted absentee because of a pandemic, it only makes sense that some votes would take longer than others to count.

All in all, the election did not turn out as many people expected on Election Night. Democrats saw some victories: Arizona’s Mark Kelly and Colorado’s John Hickenlooper flipped their Senate seats. The Squad grew stronger, with new elects like Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and America’s first trans senator—Sarah McBride—joining AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and other progressive Congressmembers. But other Republicans who Democrats hoped to oust like Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, and Lindsey Graham maintained power, and the House’s Democratic majority shrank.

Whether this is evidence that Democratic establishment is officially over and time is ripe for a new Democratic movement to take power, or if it simply proves that Republican power is strong in America, is still to be determined.

Now, with health care on the ballot, internment camps on the border, and election integrity almost irredeemably compromised, we need to come together for a last-ditch effort to make sure that our election is fair and democracy lives another day.

Join a virtual or in-person Protect the Results action in your city today.