If anything could get the cast of The West Wing [1] back together again for a reunion special, it's the 2020 election. The HBO Max special, which premiered Oct. 15, revisits the season three episode "Hartsfield's Landing" for the benefit of When We All Vote, whose mission is "to make sure every eligible voter is registered and ready to vote in every election [2]." In the episode, President Bartlet engages both Sam Seaborn and Toby Ziegler in a game of chess while dealing with a potential conflict between China and Taiwan. With the President focussed on his very real conflicts, Josh Lyman tries to account for all 42 votes in a New Hampshire primary with C.J. Cregg and Charlie Young engageing in a battle of their own.
Original cast members Rob Lowe [3], Dulé Hill, Allison Janney, Janel Moloney, Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, and Martin Sheen all reprised their roles for the theatrically staged version, with Sterling K. Brown stepping in for the late John Spencer as Leo McGarry. Instead of commercials, the episode was broken up by the cast members giving voting information, including where people can register to vote, the ins and outs of voter fraud, and statistics about both young and Black voters. Special guests included Michelle Obama [4], Bill Clinton, Samuel L. Jackson [5], and Lin-Manuel Miranda [6], who all spoke on the importance of voting [7] in this year's election. You can read some of the most important quotes from the special below.
Michelle Obama’s Quote About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "I want to urge every single one of you to vote as early as you can. In person or by mail. Just vote and don't stop there. Reach out to everyone you know to make sure they're registered and they've made a plan to cast their ballots, because every vote will make a difference in this election."
Bill Clinton’s Quotes About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "With the passage of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, we knocked down voting restrictions based on race and sex. Then some of the states pushed back and found new ways to keep some people from voting — poll taxes, literacy tests, naming all 54 county commissioners, guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar. We still had a long way to go."
- "In the '50s and '60s, we marched, we protested, and a lot of people had to put their lives on the line, and many gave their lives before we could pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965. That landmark law swept away a century of shameful efforts to suppress the vote and mandated that states and counties with a history of voter suppression couldn't make any changes to their voting laws without running them by the justice department first."
- "But two centuries of progress just came to a halt 7 years ago when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting rights act, and said even states and counties with long histories of voter suppression no longer had to submit changes in their election laws to the justice department for review . . . Voter ID laws, cuts in voting hours and early voting, purges of voter rolls, and eliminating polling places and voting machines so that you're standing in line for hours, and now even crippling the Postal Service in the midst of a pandemic so that your vote might not be counted at all."
- "So ask yourself this — If your vote really doesn't matter, why are people working so very hard to make sure you don't cast it? Because it does matter. There's real power in your vote, the power to make our Union more perfect. And there's only one response to people who are trying to suppress your vote — make sure they fail. It's our turn to push the boulder up the hill, our turn to use our power to make a more perfect."
Samuel L. Jackson’s Quotes About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "I'm here tonight with a single, simple message: All of us, every one of us, has to vote in this election. If you see brutality and bigotry on our streets and know that we're better in our hearts, you have to vote in this election. If you see science mocked and politicized in a health crisis, and know we're smarter than that, you have to vote in this election. If you see a nation of immigrants being told to fear immigrants and know we're all more decent than that, more human than that, more Godly and more American than that, you have to vote in this election."
- "Our politics today are a far cry from the romantic vision of The West Wing but it's also a far cry from the vision that's in our heads and in our hearts. And to change that, you have to vote. If democracy isn't fought for and protected by every generation, it will be replaced by something else. Make a plan to vote."
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Quotes About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "Election night this year probably isn't going to look like the election nights we're familiar with. We're used to the networks projecting the winners in each state just minutes or even seconds after the polls close. But this year, because of COVID-19, a record number of ballots will be cast by mail, and in many states mail-in ballots will be counted last . . . And what you're likely to see, whether it's the presidential race or down-ballot races, is one candidate will be well ahead on election night and the other candidate closing the gap as all the ballots are counted. It's not a sign something sinister is happening. It's a sign that every one of our votes are being carefully counted . . . It could be days before a winner is determined, declared, and certified. But it won't be because anything fishy is going on. And this is important to remember."
- "In American elections, candidates don't declare themselves the winner. State election officials and nonpartisan news outlets, like the Associated Press, declare the winner. So all of us, no matter who we vote for, have to wait for that full and careful count to be completed and not to be swayed by speculation or misinformation. Have confidence in the election. We're America. We're good at this."
Dulé Hill’s Quote About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "You ask a kid why they didn't vote and they'll tell you they don't care about politics. All politicians are the same and they're above it . . . If you want politicians to stop ignoring you, then you have to stop ignoring politics. Because ignoring it doesn't make you above it, it makes you outside of it."
Sterling K. Brown’s Quotes About Voting on The West Wing Special
- "Don't listen to those who are dying for you to sit on your hands."
- "If you're sick, not just of police brutality, but the fact no amount of marching or shouting seems to change a damn thing about it, this election matters to you and you need to vote."