An Election Day Nightmare

By Rocco Dryfka:

Imagine that it is Election Day and you are on your way to cast your vote in-person, just like you have always done.  You thought hard about the issues, and you want to vote for change.  Sure, your candidate says awkward things sometimes, but his policies are solid – you need only to contrast the way things are now against how they were before. 

Your candidate could have had a comfortable life but instead chose to fight against incredible odds and injustices on multiple fronts, and literally spilt blood and treasure for the republic – just like the founding fathers. 

He became the man in the arena* and campaigned for your vote, while you went about your life, wondering how anyone would want to run for office.  You thought to yourself, “thank goodness someone is willing to fight,” and all that was expected from you in return for his heavy lifting was your vote.  

So now on Election Day you arrive at your polling station to find long lines.  Something is wrong – the power is out or the machines aren’t working.  You heard that some groups wanted to disrupt the polling stations.  Hmmm.

It’s getting late and you’ve got things to do so you go home without voting, confident your candidate will win.  But he doesn’t – he falls behind with every drop of mail-in ballots. 

He ends up losing by just a few thousand votes.  If only those polling station disruptions hadn’t occurred, your vote and others may have provided a different outcome.  All that work by the candidate and others…squandered. Opportunity for a course correction… gone.  Hopes for a better life…dashed.  Will someone else rise to be the man in the arena to fight for our values in the future?  Maybe.

But this nightmare can be avoided altogether by banking your vote.  Instead of voting on election day, you should vote by absentee or early voting. 

To vote by absentee voting:  Go to the website here. Click on the tab “Apply to Vote Absentee by Mail” and fill out the short application.  Your ballot will arrive by mail.  Fill out your ballot and mail or drop it off at your registrar’s office.

Early voting: To cast your vote in-person right now, go to your registrar’s office and cast your vote.  Find your registrar’s office here.

This election, let the opposition wake up to their worst nightmare – an energy independent republic with low fuel prices, secure borders, low inflation, good manufacturing jobs, rule of law, low taxes…and all the other things they find “weird.”

*Man in the Arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

-Theodore Roosevelt, From his 1910 speech Citizenship in a Republic