10 Things VOTER

1. Today is Voter Registration Day. It's about getting out the vote.

2. There are a lot of laws being proposed and put into practice that suppress voters. I can't find the graphic right now but it went around Facebook some time last week and it was flow charty. To paraphrase, if state sanctioned ID is required to vote and if it costs money to get an ID from the state then you are charging money to vote and that's not right. (NH, I'm looking at you. Giving you the side eye, even. I hate it when I have to do that.)

3. When I realized at the nearly last minute that I would be out of town for the primary elections in my district this month I panicked. I happened to run into a local politician, Lincoln Restler, whose team then helped me walk through the process of absentee voting. The day before I went to Italy I ran over to the election board offices, was given a ballot and a place to mark it, and fulfilled my civic duty/privilege. It was pretty cool. Much gratitude to Restler and his team for making it just that easy.

4. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't vote you need to zip your lip. If you were a football player refusing to play because of the temp refs I'd want you to shut up, too. We'll never know what would have happened with your input so your projections are invalid.

5. The only time I've ever waited more than 5 minutes to vote in my current district was in the 2008 presidential election. Everyone turned out for that one. I really, really hope they turn out for this one.

6. I think I might only have voted once in my state of origin and that by absentee ballot. It makes me a little sad that I never got to go to the town hall and have my name looked up in the big ledgers like I remember happening when my mom took me with her.

7. A teacher in college was the first person to really get me excited about my value as a voter. Of course, by the time she managed to engage me it was too late for me to get an absentee ballot from the home state or to register in NYC. I sat down and talked to her about whether or not I should fly home to vote in person. She talked me out of it. It was the right decision but it was a weird conversation for me and, I'm sure, for her. I'm sorry in some ways that I was the over stimulated teenager who forced that on her. In other ways not so much.

8. I know we may disagree on a lot of things politically and I'll try to make peace with it but the not voting thing? That's the toughest one.

9. Today in a town in NJ a proposal was defeated that would have gotten new roofs on their schools and solar panels on those roofs for long term energy efficiency. Popular opinion suggests it was defeated because near the last minute someone attached $1.5 million of new turf for the football field to the proposal. I'm not saying the system is unfixable but I am saying that some people with the power to legislate are jerks.

10. Please vote. Please please please vote. Make sure you're registered now so you you can. Please.