Please vote — and help someone else do it, too

COMMENTARY: Well folks, here it is, what has become my biannual get-out-the-vote commentary. I wasn’t going to write one this year, over the last few cycles I figured I’ve said all that could be said on the subject.

This election feels different though: more tossups, more energy than I have ever seen in a midterm. More reasons to vote.

By the time Heath publishes this, there will be less than two weeks to Election Day, some of you will have already voted, and frankly you’re tired of reading about it. Fair enough; so am I. Feel free to stop reading here if you’ve already voted and helped a least one other person to vote.

Now, the rest of you, why haven’t you voted yet? Yea, I know, your vote doesn’t matter. Tell that to the former city councilman in Farmington who won his first race by one vote. Tell it to the fewer than 80,000 voters who ensured Donald Trump’s win.

You’re not informed? There is Google. There are many sources to pick from. I kind of like this one. If anyone has one they like better, put a link in the comments below or on NMPolitics.net’s, Facebook please. The more the better.

Don’t like your choices? Have you ever had perfect choices in life? Try changing the way you think about this. It’s not voting “for the lesser of two evils” — it’s voting for the better of the two or three options before you. Let me assure you from a lifetime of voting, the perfect candidate doesn’t exist. Pick the one that seems to most closely reflect what’s important to you.

Don’t have time? Early Voting has been open since the 20th, and if that doesn’t work, if you fill out this form today you’ll still have time to get an absentee ballot. Yes, you’ll need some stamps to mail it back or you can skip the line and just turn it in at any polling place in your county.

Maybe you think I’m just being partisan. Nope. There is something remarkable in our system of government, something that until 242 years ago, not that long in the grander scheme of things, didn’t even exist: our right to choose our own leaders, and remove them at our will, not theirs.

So remarkable is this that the rest of the world has at least tried to copy our system. That leaves us with not only a right, but a duty and responsibility to vote.

Go vote.

One last thing: There is a good chance I’m somewhat preaching to the choir here. Share this article with your kids, your nephew, anyone else who may need a nudge to vote. It matters, for the sake of not only our country, but our daily lives.

Claudia Anderson of Farmington is a past Democratic Party county officer and member of the party’s State Central Committee. She has been active in several political campaigns. Today she follows politics avidly as a concerned citizen. She has been proudly voting since 1972. Agree with her opinion? Disagree? We welcome your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here.