Since Chuck and I often bought cruises 3 years in advance and took long car journeys north and west, we always requested ballots for voting by mail. We were often the center of attention at cruise dinner tables, or once at a B&B in England when we lounged around on election day and foreign people asked us lots of questions about our voting process. People don’t understand our electoral college… It’s hard to explain that it kept things even between north and south when slave owners could vote with a heavy impact of being worth more than one vote…. A man was counted based on how many slaves he owned… So a plantation might get 100 votes but have only one man voting. A slave was worth 1/3 or 2/3 of a human being. The census is super important today as it decides how many "votes" a district gets based on how many people live there. I encourage anyone who didn’t vote yet to get your one vote counted… and to study the electoral college and the census. It’s up to "the people" to change things if we want to be counted!
Yesterday at 815am I left the house and got into line at the Lake Placid Community center (the Town hall) to vote with a Rosary and only got in 3 decades. I wore a mask and social distanced… When we entered the hall 5 at a time it was a little crowded but we were moved around and out quickly…. I turned in Chuck’s ballot, turned in my mail in ballot and said I wanted to "punch the ticket." They handed me a pen and I filled in the little circles on the ballot. I wrote on my ballot, slid it into a computer, and got out!!!! Home one hour after I left the house! I used a double dollop of hand sanitizer at the town hall and washed my hands at home. Back to the routine of walking for one hour and … I am done. I might glance at the last debate (I taped it). or not. I don’t know. I don’t want to get irritated by bad behavior. I want to remain calm and hopeful. I pray for unity and kindness. I hope and pray we will not dissolve into shouting and obstreperousness. Good word isn’t it!!!! Stubbornly resistent to control! What is it I want for us? What did I want to say in my last blog if it wasn’t clear enough? We have a moral standard. It was delivered in the early Old Testament. If one believes God speaks in Scripture then we have our standard. We don’t need a bunch of written rules (laws) with addendums…. We have the basics. No killing. No stealing. This includes no anger that kills the soul. And we have the words of Jesus and his Apostles after him… Love one another. I pray for peace. Let us all ask God to cover us with His Grace! Pour out Grace Lord.