Vote, damn you! Vote!

If you are fortunate enough to be living in a country where you have the opportunity to make your voice heard through the ballot box, as I am, you have a duty not only to your nation but to yourself.

"But I'm only one vote. It won't make a difference when there are so many other people voting for [insert candidate here]."

One word: Bullshit. I lived and voted for eleven years in Junius, NY. The place is so small that the Town Judge held court in the front room of his house until about 1994, when they moved the "courtroom" to the dining hall at the two-truck firehouse. By the way, one of those trucks was a genuine antique. It was all the town could afford to buy when they realized that they needed a second truck to haul water. Fireplugs were few and far between; there was no "town water". Everybody had wells or cisterns. (On the other hand, the taxes were negligible. Nice inexpensive place to live. No property zoning; everything was considered agricultural.)

My point is this: in Junius there are only about 600 eligible voters. Some local races were decided by only one or two votes; many by a couple dozen votes. Now expand that to the county level, the state/provincial/prefecture level, the national level. Do you remember the 2000 presidential election, that was ultimately decided by 537 votes in Florida? Decided by 0.009% of the voting Floridians. I withhold my views on the Supreme Court decision for now, preferring to focus on the numbers as they have been recorded for posterity.

"All politicians are liars and crooks. Why should I enable them?"

Maybe they all are. Maybe there are some who are completely honest. Get over it. Every vote counts. Hold your nose if you must, but cast your fucking ballot. Somebody has to sit in those government seats. Do you really want the people around you to have a say in who gets to sit there without any input from you, or would you rather sit on your hands and bitch about the people you never even tried to vote either for or against?

I use the absentee ballot, and have done so since 2004. That year I didn't want to deal with the crowds at the polling place, so I mailed in an absentee ballot. And then, come election day, I found myself hospitalized and unable to attend the festivities.

Since then I have always used the absentee form because I don't know what life will throw at me on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This year it is November 2nd. "Be there or be square!"

My father, who drilled the necessity of voting into my heart, and mother once missed their opportunity to vote because my grandfather had passed away; they had to leave their state to attend the funeral and it was too late to fill out an absentee ballot. I remember how upset he was about that.

Vote! (Unless you plan on voting for Carl "Bat Man" Paladino. Thanks in advance.)

I kind of like the "Rent Is Too Damn High Party" guy.