Trump Has Convinced Me

A close friend, no fan of President Trump, texted me a few days ago, and said in part:

“As you know, I’m voting in person.  It’s not a political statement, but a practical statement.  The way your vote doesn’t count is screwing up filling out the ballot properly.  I know I won’t screw it up in person.”

I have also decided that I’m going to vote in person.  Although I’m at least as likely to screw up a mail-in ballot as our friend is, mine is a practical decision born of a different concern.  In a note a while back, I indicated, “I hope it won’t be necessary, but if it is, on November 3, for the country I want my children and grandchildren to live in, I will be willing to shake the hands of 20 desperately ill COVID patients and hug 20 more if that is what is required to reach a ballot box to vote against Donald John Trump.”  It’s time to back that up.  While measures that extreme probably won’t be necessary, given the malevolent manner in which Mr. Trump has sown distrust in a process which provides more of our people an opportunity to vote (an approach for which there is no credible evidence of any significant fraud having ever occurred in this country, and an approach he himself uses), the high likelihood that his lawyers will seek court orders to prematurely stop the counting of mail-in ballots in swing states such as Wisconsin, and the equally high likelihood of complicity to keep Mr. Trump in power by the bitter and resentful Republican Relics that control my state’s legislature, I refuse to be disenfranchised.  If there are but two Wisconsin votes recorded for Mr. Biden on Election Day [our friend undoubtedly being the other ;)], I want to know that one of them is mine.