I am an ultra-advocate to the rights and privileges of voting.  If you don’t vote then you should have no say in what your representatives do in Washington.  Sadly, we are one of the lowest participatory democracies in the world.  Less than half of those eligible to vote in any election usually choose to do so.  When that happens we allow a small minority to choose our elected officials.  That is certainly what happened in 2016.

An unlikely coalition of estranged fringe groups eerily chose our president. For the most part the uninformed masses coalesced into an unchallenged voting block. Will this continue going forward? Will the “Pitchforks at the Palace” be the norm in the future? I guess only time will tell. But I kinda think that eventually saner minds will prevail once again.

But let me get to the point of this post now. Those of us who spend hours studying the candidates to determine who we will vote for  seem to think that somehow our vote is more important than the guy who blindly voted for someone who simply says what he wants to hear. Does our informed vote count more than that guy’s?  Of course the answer is no.  Every vote counts the same no matter how wisely or ignorantly it was cast.  That is the foundation of a democracy.  But does it have to be?

If you get “F”s on your tests in your school you fail the grade and have to take it again.  At least in theory that is. Ha.  If you don’t pass your driver’s test you don’t get a license to drive. So, how come you have a right to vote no matter how miserably you would fail a basic citizenship test? Isn’t voting for someone to run of our country more important than that?

If I follow this logic to another extremely important area of life I could claim that you have to pass a parenting course before you can have children.  There are just too many kids brought into this world by people who have absolutely no idea of what it takes to raise a child.

Your vote counts, but……