Election Day

It is raining this morning. The wind is blustery enough to make umbrellas foolish. The maples and oaks are showing their oranges and yellows. You can hear the cars splashing the rainwater collected on the street. I have my lamps lit in my office to battle the blues. Today is election day. The candidates who have not yet given up are still beating their chests and spewing their hyperbole to crowds gathered in states where rain is not the day's offering. They say that there will be more weather in the Mid Atlantic states. They opine that it may effect the voting patterns on this day. It is easy to feel like your vote means nothing in an electorate which is vast, diverse and so easily swept by the whims of advertising, jingles and marketing. I know a lot of people who are not registered to vote. Some have never been registered to vote. Some feel like its a worthless exercise. Others don't feel like there is anything worth voting for. Some are so pessimistic that they don't see the point. There are so many places on this earth where leadership is chosen for you. Monarchies, dictatorships, oligarchies, places caught in rebellion where voting is dangerous, even deadly. But voting and serving on juries is the primary way in which we can show each other that we have a choice in how our lives are run. My father once told me he wanted the ability to choose a candidate, rather than voting for the lesser of two evils. I would argue that voting for the lesser of two evils is better than no choice at all. Otherwise, we have no one to blame than ourselves when things go wrong. We are two hundred and thirty some odd years divorced from when our choices were made for us by royalty or the peerage. For some of us, that span of time is even shorter, women, minorities, recent citizens. I, perhaps, can understand the forgetfulness of a white male who has never known anything other than the free will afforded our system of government. For those for whom elections are brand new exercises of our rights, it is less understandable. There have been so many battles. In the first national elections the right to participate was limited to people like me: white, male property owners. Two hundred years later, the valuable asset is spread to a wider group. We should be proud to vote today. So many people before us have argued, contended, marched and died for that simple privilege.