Today is Massachusetts primary day. And if you haven’t either mailed your ballot in, or voted early (in other words, if you’re like me), you will trudge to the polls, wait in line, and cast your ballot.
Or, you won’t.
And more and more, I fear the latter. I fear that the ceaseless chatter about rigged elections, Russians, and all the rest will alienate voters even more than they already are.
And that’s not a good thing.
Voting is still the only way the majority of us in this country can participate in the process. We’re not all cut out to be politicians. Most of us don’t have the elephant-thick skins to put up with what our elected officials have to endure.
I couldn’t, and my skin’s thick enough, at least, to read a critical email, or listen to an irate voice mail, over something I’ve written. What our politicians get is probably 10 times worse.
There’s no doubt that it’s toxic — probably a little too toxic at times. And that cannot help the cause of those who work diligently and arduously to make sure people vote.
I think it’s one reason not enough people run for office anymore. Outside of the U.S. Senate race, the 6th District congressional primary and the contest in the 16th Suffolk race, we have few contested races in our area. And I know it’s difficult to motivate yourself to go to the polls and stand in a line that may be even longer due to social distancing protocols. But you’ve got to do it.
Maybe you don’t like Ed Markey. Perhaps you feel it’s time for more change in the Massachusetts delegation, and a young firebrand of a senator is just the ticket.
Or maybe you think that Joseph P. Kennedy III is rather elephantine in his apparent attempt to follow the blueprint his great-uncle Jack laid out in his path to the presidency. They are pretty similar. Jack had three terms in Congress before unseating a popular incumbent, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge.
Maybe you’ve become disenchanted with Seth Moulton, our 6th District Congressman.
It could also be just the opposite. Maybe you love all three (in which case I hope you have a coin handy so you can flip it when you’re faced with voting for either Markey or Kennedy).
The point is other than an occasional barroom argument (which you really can’t get into these days) or a Facebook debate, how else are you going to make your feelings known but to vote? Don’t you want to exercise that right? I would. Whatever else I’m doing on election day, it’s not more important than voting.
And it doesn’t matter whether you like either candidate. Sometimes it comes down to that. I can’t say I liked either presidential candidate very much in 2016, so I picked the one I disliked less intensely, held my nose, and voted.
I don’t want to get melodramatic about this. I don’t want to talk about all the wars and all the people who have died on battlefields all over the world, so that we can have this right. But I think I just did.
What I want to say, though, is that we are in a situation where the sanctity of our electoral process is under assault. We have people who are saying, and have been saying for a long time now, that we cannot trust this process. That it is susceptible to being rigged.
I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this: Those who pound that drum have ulterior motives. They want to plant that seed in your head, but they also are discouraging you to vote. They are saying that however you vote, it’s not going to matter because it’s all fixed.
There’s only one way to prove these people wrong, and we all know what it is. Flock to the polls — even to a crummy old state primary — and vote for someone.
