Early voting for the upcoming Nov. 8 elections opens up this week – so I want to take this opportunity to encourage every certified voter out there (and I mean every single one of you) to take the time, do your civic and patriotic duty, and get out there and vote, either through early voting or at the polls on election day.
And I don’t care about your political leanings or party affiliation. You can be a Democrat or Republican or MAGA Republican or independent or liberal or conservative or moderate or libertarian or progressive or communist or fascist or semi-fascist or anarchist or whatever. You’re entirely free to vote.
You can be down at the younger end of legal voting age or on up there in years. Either way, your vote counts the same.
You can be well-to-do or not doing so well. Voting is free of charge.
It doesn’t matter about your skin tone or ethnicity or gender or anything else about you as a person. Your right to vote is constitutionally guaranteed.
And you’re completely free to vote any which way you choose – and your reasons are entirely your own.
You can vote straight up and down by party lines, or you can mix it up.
You can thoroughly research each candidate and where they stand on the issues, or you can just go in there and pick names at random.
You can let your vote be guided by your own personal interests or by what you feel to be the greater good (or a bit of both).
You might even believe that the whole system is rigged and that your vote won’t make any difference. Vote anyway – because not voting pretty much guarantees that your vote won’t make a difference.
And remember, when you’re in that voting booth, you really are 100 percent free. You are under no obligation whatsoever to vote according to how anyone else tells you to – not your spouse or your parents or your kids or your friends or your co-workers or your boss or your pastor or your colleagues or your drinking buddies or your social media circle or some talking head on cable news.
That ballot belongs to you and you alone.
So get out there and vote like the free person you are.
P.S. To all the employers out there, please give your employees the time and opportunity to vote. That’s just the right thing to do. And if you know someone who needs a little assistance getting where they need to go to vote, step up and help them out. That’s the neighborly thing to do.
