More than a month ago I took my postal ballot for the US state of Virginia to my local Sydney suburban post office, paid for a registered letter, and sent it off with hopes for vice-president Kamala Harris’s victory and the defeat of the convicted criminal Donald Trump.
I was surprised how many of my Australian friends expressed envy when I told them I had voted in the US presidential election. “I wish I could vote too,” one said, “so much is riding on this”.
We all know the outcome now, and as devastating as it was for my American friends and family, there are so many Australians and people around the world dismayed as well. The reverberations from this election will oscillate outwards: the Ukraine war, the war in Gaza, Nato, trade tariffs, reproductive rights. It will exacerbate the culture of misogyny and hamper the attempts to slow global warming and climate change.
And yet, many Americans chose not to exercise their democratic right to vote. From the early statistics, voter turnout for this election was around 64%. But the institutionalised inequities of racism and capitalism are not going to be solved by compulsory voting. And it is almost impossible to imagine compulsory voting implemented in a country where individual freedom is so highly prized.
When I moved to Australia 22 years ago, I couldn’t get over how much control the government could exercise: from random breath testing to fines for non-voting – these things are incomprehensible in a country which puts so much emphasis on the Bill of Rights and individual liberty. Yet the irony is, this democracy itself is now under threat, with Trump’s unabashed admiration of dictatorships and strongmen.
What might we do, then, in the face of the helplessness we feel in Australia at the result of the US election: a victory for division, dehumanisation, fear and greed? Fight harder to protect the rights we have in Australia that the United States is on the cusp of losing (or has already lost). The rights of women over their own bodies. The rights of LGBTQIA+ people, people with a disability, and minority groups. Work harder to protect the rights of First Nations people, refugees and immigrants.
I’ve never been so grateful for my chosen country, for the Australian electoral commission, gun control and Medicare. But I cannot turn away from my birthplace either, I’ll do everything I can to support democracy there. The brilliant US writer Rebecca Solnit wrote: “The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.”
I washed the dinner dishes on Wednesday night with my radio tuned to ABC Classic, too weary and depressed to listen to more news. Yolngu artist Gurrumul’s concert at the Sydney Opera House was playing, and his beautiful, bittersweet music melded with the flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos that flew overhead at dusk, their mournful calls echoing my heartache. The natural world and works of art, literature and music will always be places of solace from existential grief.
But we can’t stop paying attention, either. We cannot become numbed by apathy and disillusionment. Both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have sent their congratulations to Donald Trump already. The last place we want to find ourselves now is in America’s long shadow.
• Eleanor Limprecht is the author of What Was Left, Long Bay, The Passengers and The Coast. Her next novel, Cul de Sac, will be published in 2026 by Ultimo Press
