Dear Editor,
I got my first political cardboard of the year. Christi Jacobsen, Secretary of State, stating we don’t want “them”, people to vote. Not sure which “them people” she was referring to. We can vote for imported candidates with all the political action groups’ imported money.
We have redistricting every few years where they look at the map and start drawing lines regardless of mountains, rivers and county boundaries. Voters have to drive twenty or more miles to get to their polling place. For safety we can no longer use schools as polling places, so we have to have several precincts in one place each having fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred voters. You think that would make people happy, finding a parking place, finding which line to be in, then voting and get to work or back to work. One good reason to make election day a holiday, it takes most of the day.
There is mail in ballots or absentee ballots but rumors say the postal service no longer can treat ballots any differently than any other mail. If they saw a ballot, they would separate them and make a special delivery to the election office. Now the mail in ballot needs not only your signature but your birth date, if they still allow them. Let’s make the election process easier, and don’t let people vote or at least discourage voting.
Voting is a right and privilege but like most rights they come with responsibility, get to know the candidates and issues. One has to do a little research on one’s own not just what the special interest group says. Candidates should have an age limit, as all the reading and studying of the issues needed to make an informed vote. Candidates should have a few year’s real world work experience. I had thought of taking a politician to a city they have never been to, dropping them off with no credit cards, no identification, no phone and just the clothes on their back. Get them to experience the real world; we’ll pick you up in two weeks.
Lauris Byxbe,
Pompeys Pillar
