Voting

The strength of our democracy lies in the participation of it's citizens. Attempts to suppress that participation are an attack on our democracy. When politicians or their supporters try to suppress voting, they're putting their party above our country. I would rather have a person vote contrary to my likes than not vote at all. Country is more important than party.

While both the Democratic Party and the Republican Pary have used voter suppression tactics in the past, the most abusive party in that respect in the last several years, overwhelming so, has been and is the Republican Party. That's one the reasons that contributed to my finally leaving the Republican Party. When I was in my 20s, I worked on voter registration efforts as a Republican. We certainly hoped that those we registered would vote Republican, but the more important thing was that they voted. I'll be 80 next year, and the Republican party I knew when I was young has basically ceased to exist. We need both parties, and BOTH parties should be working to get as many people voting as possible. If you want to see the ideas of your party advance, the way to do that is to educate the electorate as to why your policies are better, not to try and suppress the vote of demographics that you think will vote for your opposition.

To those who say they don't like any of the candidates, I say: Vote for the one you can most agree with. Putting it another way: Vote for the one you least dislike. Surely, at the very least, you must feel that one of the candidates, especially presidential candidates, will do less harm than the other. If so, to not vote for the one you believe will do the least harm, is equivalent to increasing the probability that the candidate you believe will do the most harm will win, and that's just plain wrong. You're voting to harm your country more than you believe it would otherwise be harmed.

Oregon votes by mail. When my spouse and I receive our ballots in the mail, we typically mark them within hours. We can return them by mail, but I usually put them in one of the many ballot drop boxes positioned around the county the next time we go into town (we live in the country). No special trip, no standing in line, and the paper ballots are available for recount. Procrastinators have until 20:00 on election day to get it done. Oregon gets around 80% participation for a Presidential election.

For more information, see this old but still relevant Washington Post article, Vote-by-Mail: The Real Winner is Democracy.