Today, I voted.

This morning I woke up without significant concern for my health, safety, or well being.

I live in a state that mails me a ballot weeks before the election.

I have ample time to consider the options and investigate the candidates.

My computer and my mail delivers multiple independent sources of information about the candidates, their views, formal positions, and past voting history.

Instead of mailing, I filled out my ballot today, and drove it to a collection site just outside the court house. As I drove by on the street, smiling people collected my ballot and placed it into the box.

I have little concern that my paper ballot, which was clear and easy to complete, will be misinterpreted, discarded or misused. 

I did this without worry of persecution, bodily injury, discrimination... without so much as the slightest inconvenience, really.

I voted. I hope you did, too, because before us there were many people who died in order for us to have this right. In other countries, people are fighting, dying, and pledging to die in the fight for something that--for us--is a given, an assumed, a right.

Some US citizens take it for granted so much that they don't even bother to do it: voter turnout rates are between 50-65%.

That means 35-50% of our citizens do not vote.


That's a shame.