Vote by Snail

There are stories this year of election irregularities, flyers telling Democrats to vote on the 5th, keeping students from voting, putting polling places miles out of town with too many voters than the law allows.

We need to move toward early voting, vote by mail, maybe electronic voting. We don't need to travel by horse and buggy to get to the city on Tuesday anymore.

My friend Laura worked as an election protection lawyer in Virginia. She talked to a man who was kept from voting in Richmond because he was told he was registered in Fairfax. He has lived in Richmond for years. Instead of going home in disgust, he drove two hours to Fairfax to vote.

Despite the pain in the neck, 62 million Americans got up early, waited in line, endured some inconvenience. How could anyone sit this out when so many people, especially in Virginia and points south, fought and bled and died to give us the right? Sounds romantic but so much more poignant this time.