Archive: Opinions

I mailed my absentee ballot a day or two after I received it to make sure it had plenty of time to get to the Board of Elections.  Local mail has been generally good, so I am not worried about it arriving on time, despite Washington's efforts to cripple the Postal Service in the months before the election.  But I saw a Washington Post article today that says that of the 92 million mail ballots requested this year, more than 42 million have not yet been returned as of Wednesday afternoon.  There is less than a week left, so  that is concerning.

On Wednesday CNN reported that over a third of registered voters -- 75 million, or 36% -- have already voted.  That is encouraging, but will the other two thirds vote?  If you requested an absentee ballot but haven't sent it in you can still vote in person.  Early voting ends Sunday, and Election Day is Tuesday.  In what is widely viewed as an important presidential election,voting is especially important this year.

A lot of folks, myself included, requested absentee ballots so we wouldn't have to vote in the COVID-19-infested world.  There has been a big national scare about the Postal Service being unable to get all those ballots to election boards on time, but my big beef is that we absentee voters are discriminated against because we don't get those fun 'I Voted' stickers.  Then again, if we're not leaving our homes, who would we show them to?

If you are someone who says, oh well, if I don't get around to voting it won't matter, because my one vote won't tip the scales, think about recent Lansing elections in which literally only a couple of votes tipped the scales for the winning candidate.  If three or five people had voted for the other guy we'd have a different town council, and this has happened, more or less in Lansing county board elections as well.  It's all those one votes that add up to a win.

If you have an absentee ballot but haven't mailed it yet, you can still drop it off at the Board of Elections.  I suspect that there are fewer people to be potentially exposed to there than at the early voting sites where there have reportedly been lines to get in.  The point is, however you do it, vote.


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