Election Day

Today was Election Day, first Tuesday of November. No big elections this year, just House of Representatives and some local officials such as mayor (only one candidate), sheriff (same), and town council members (uncontested). Can you tell it’s a small town?

Anyways, we took the kids with us to vote for the first time. It just worked out that way – I forgot to go this morning, my wife couldn’t go during the day, so we ended up going after dinner with the kids.

It’s funny, but neither of us used to care particularly about voting. I can remember (with a large degree of shame, I must say) several presidential elections in which I didn’t even vote. Took the standard young adult cop-out of believing that I couldn’t make a difference, there was no use fighting The System, etc. We have reformed of late, and the last few years we have been very diligent about voting – and I feel good about that.

Even today, when there was nothing really important on the ballot, it felt good to stand in that booth and exercise my rights as an American. Even better that our children were there, expressing a high level of interest in how the process works. They asked many clever questions (the one exception – the middle one asked what we were voting about and then answered himself, “Are you voting to see if President Lincoln stays in office?” – he thought he was very funny) that made us feel like we at least are raising kids who have some social conscience.

Yeah, it’s great to live in a democracy – even a sometimes flawed one. I’d best end this one before I start to sound right-wing again. I could probably do several thousand words on how lucky we are to be Americans, and how few people appreciate it, and how voter turnout today was less than 50%…don’t get me started.