Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Tonight is Election Eve, where everyone in our country will go to sleep under the current administration and wake up tomorrow ready to vote. Even the undecideds must climb down from the fence. Tomorrow night’s sleep may not be as restful, regardless of which candidate one voted for. There is too much in the balance.

Over the course of tomorrow night, I see a long siege of popular votes vs. electoral votes. I see another long siege of battleground states vs. the rest of us. I see anger and challenges and votes of the recorded and nonrecorded kind. What I don’t see is a country exercising its right to vote in the spirit in which democracy is intended. Things are too bitter.

When I was in school, I was taught that democracy was about respecting each person’s point of view; in the end, the candidate who received the most electoral votes won. We elected our officials by ballot and not by battleground. But what’s happened in recent years is that elections have been fraught with claims of chicanery, and the winner has not had a clear-cut mandate. As a country, we are so evenly divided that, regardless of who wins on Tuesday, it will be difficult to come together. If we don’t try, however, our definition of democracy will eventually become synonymous with chaos.