My household’s ballots are NOT out of control: They’ve been safely cast

Say what you will about voting this year: The absolutely safest way is the one my wife and I pursued, successfully this week: We went to our local registrar’s office early on a Friday afternoon, encountered no lines, and cleanly and simply cast our ballots — on paper, which was then fed (by us) into the machine that records those votes.

Nothing could be simpler, or more fool-proof.

Our fearful leader — our president — would have us think otherwise.

We had to show a photo ID, then we were given a ticket to admit us to the voting room. (A ticket, but no popcorn.)

And vote we did.

We took the trouble to visit the registrar’s office, about 20 miles from our home, because, frankly, even though our local polling station is relatively risk-free — there’s never been a line more than two-deep in the seven years I’ve voted there — I just didn’t want to run any risks this year.

My wife and I both are high-risk: She’s 54 and diabetic; I’m rounding out my 78th year and experiencing ESRD. (ESRD, End Stage Renal Disease, means my kidneys are done, and the only way one can live without healthy kidneys is to go on dialysis, a process that extracts your blood, cleans it, then returns in to your body. It’s a four-hour, thrice weekly procedure. Or, you can get a ‘new’ kidney — one from a donor. I took myself off the donor-seeking list then I heard that [1] the waiting list was in the neighborhood of 12 years and [2] I’d have to remain alcohol-free during that period. I had no desire to pursue a kidney transplant at age 85 or so, I there was no way I was going to forgo drinking alcohol for even a fraction of that time… and beyond. As a dialysis patient with not a lot beyond that going on in my life, I’m not about to give up the thing — dumb as it is — that sustained me for fifty-plus years!)

I’ve been on dialysis two years. It consumes your life. I fully understand why my father, after five years of this semi-torture, simply gave up (probably by skipping dialysis sessions), and willed himself to die. (Frankly, quitting dialysis is a way of committing suicide. It’s a choice. Family members and friends may not like the choice you made, but it’s your choice.)

Now, to the issue of mailed-in-ballots — those our fearmongering leader has so often rebuked of late, one can but assume that ballots received via a USPS delivery person (assuming it’s a legitimate one, not one in a faked USPS truck and uniform!) will be properly documented, as our actual, in-person ballots were, at a polling place. That system, like the in-person one, records both the vote and the ID of a corresponding individual.

There is a slight margin of error in that system: As the mailed-in ballot itself is unsigned, it is conceivably possible that one could at least attempt to vote twice (or thrice). But once a person’s vote is recorded against a voter registration list, that’s it — the one vote that individual can cast.

So, like most other things in life, the voting system is not perfect, of perfectly fool-proof. But it’s way closer to fool-proof than our scary leader would have us believe.

Long-time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who ruled there from 1955 through ’76, is famous for (among other things) saying “vote early, vote often”. Even Chicagoans (among many others) today believe that to be both a nonsensical as well as illegal an approach to advancing a candidate’s chances. There are those in Washington today who seemingly believe otherwise.

It is our duty as citizens to prove them wrong — to go out and cast our votes, and be both observant and objectionable to those who would have it otherwise.

Until a few years ago, this was, for the most part, a peaceful, law-abiding country. Our leaders were law-abiding and peace-oriented. Sadly, that is not the case today. Our ultimate leader, and, sadly, many in ‘responsible’ positions beneath him, have no sense of honor or loyalty or duty to perform in ways that reflect the goals and ambitions of the citizenry at large. Our current president has but one goal: To advance his own, personal objectives, whatever they may be.

I am baffled by why a man who claims to be worth billions of dollars would wish to continue to pursue an office that is worth well less, in income terms, than $1,000,000 a year (plus a pension of what, $250k a year). He’s more than 70 years old. Why doesn’t he relax, rest on what laurels he thinks he has… and let the rest of us get on with the life he’s trying to deny us?