Voting

It's important, don't you think?

I do. I really, really do.

Also, I'm a person who's kind of all or nothing. So I vote whenever I can. Circuit court judge, council member, congressperson, President. I'm all over it.

Do not take this to mean that I'm one of those super informed people that reads every tiny little thing that comes into the inbox about every issue. 'Cause I'm not and I don't. I'll tell you what's interesting about that, though.

You can still vote even if you don't know every last little thing about the Junior High School transcript of Velmanette Montgomery.

One time I went in and there were 3 referendums on the ballot and I didn't know anything about them. You know what I did? I read them. Then I spent a minute or 2 and I thought about them. Then I voted my conscience.

Radical.

I'm not the perfect voter. I can get better.

Think of it this way, I've probably got as much room to improve in my physical fitness as in my electoral fitness. If I can do just 10 minutes a day of exercise then I'm getting better and eventually I'll be able to work longer and do more and some day become comfortably fit. I vote. And I try to stretch the best of my ability to vote every time I do it. I try to listen more to what's going on around me in politics and to read more and vote in a more informed way. Now you move that analogy along and you get this: if one doesn't vote until one knows enough about all the issues on the ballot then is it not the equivalent of not working out at all until you've got the absolute perfect 1 hour work out planned, every second of it? That's not going to do you nearly as much good as just doing something.

I don't think that the system is perfect. And it may well be getting less perfect as each day rolls by. But it's the system we have and it is a good one. The only way to make it better is to work out just a few minutes a day until we achieve that perfect one hour workout.