I’ve blathered, bloviated and brow-beaten folks for years about the value of participating in this form of government of ours.

You know how it goes. If you don’t vote, then you can’t gripe. You can’t take ownership of the decisions that your elected representatives make on your behalf. You cede all of that responsibility to the guy next door … or to the idiot down the street or across town who disagrees with everything you hold dear about public policy.

The early vote on the upcoming Amarillo referendum on the multipurpose event venue continues to roll up some encouraging numbers, no matter how one feels about the $32 million MPEV that’s been proposed for the city’s downtown district.

According to the Amarillo Globe-News, which is doing a pretty good job of tracking the early-vote totals, 6,655 voters had cast ballots as of Friday. The raw number all by itself doesn’t say much … at least not yet.

After all, the city has about 100,000 individuals who are registered to vote. So, as of this week, we’ve seen fewer than 10 percent of the registered voters actually casting ballots.

Early voting continues through this coming Friday.

Then on Nov. 3, the polls open across the city and the rest of us — that would include me — get to vote.

I have no way of knowing what the final early vote total will be.

But based on comparative figures with other key municipal elections, this campaign has generated considerable interest on both sides of the political divide.

The early-vote totals so far are about 2,000 greater than those who voted early in the May municipal election that seated three new members to the Amarillo City Council; the MPEV early-vote number is about 1,000 fewer than the totals to date for the November 2014 general election; this year’s early voting is more than 3,000 votes greater than the early-vote totals year over year for the November 2013 constitutional amendment election.

This is all a very good thing for the future of participatory democracy.

Yes, I wish we could get every registered voter to actually cast a ballot. Better yet, I wish we could get every person who is eligible to vote to actually register and then go out and vote. Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

I’ll keep wishing for such an event, even though I know I’ll likely never see it.

Until then, I plan to keep hoping that Amarillo can turn the tide against the dismal participation we’ve exhibited when it concerns matters at City Hall.