{"id":44236,"date":"2020-09-03T00:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44236"},"modified":"2020-09-03T00:00:30","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T00:00:30","slug":"going-to-vote-early-on-the-first-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44236","title":{"rendered":"Going to vote early … on the first day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(AP Photo\/Charlie Neibergall)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I cannot even believe I am saying this, but I must blurt it out.<\/p>\n

Texas opens its polling places for early voting on Oct. 13. I intend to be among the first in line to cast my ballot for president of the United States of America.<\/p>\n

I will be wearing my mask. I’ll have my spray-on hand sanitizer in my pocket. I will keep a socially distant<\/em> space between myself and the total strangers with whom I intend to be standing.<\/p>\n

You see, this represents a monumental sea change for yours truly. I am one who is wedded to the pageantry of voting on Election Day. I have enjoyed Election Day voting since I cast my first ballot in the spring of 1972 when I voted in Oregon’s Democratic primary.<\/p>\n

Every presidential election year since has seen my wife and me troop to the polls on Election Day.<\/p>\n

Not this year.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has me worried about getting infected. My wife is even more militant about the measures we need to take than I am. Texas isn’t likely to join several other states in requiring mail-in voting, given our state’s political leadership and its fealty to Donald Trump, who suggests — wrongly, I have to say — that mail-in voting is fraught with corruption. He’s lying.<\/p>\n

So my wife and I will troop to the polls on Oct. 13. We will cast our votes as early as possible. We want them logged into the high-powered electronic system they use in Collin County. I heard this week that the Allen Event Center will open as a voting center for county residents. It is a spacious venue that will enable voters to practice social distancing while casting their ballots. I will be there among those early voters.<\/p>\n

You know who will get my presidential vote. It won’t be the incumbent. Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice among the huge field of Democrats running initially. Indeed, I really never found anyone among the field who stood out.<\/p>\n

Biden is the last man standing. He endured the grueling process. He won a key endorsement on the eve of the South Carolina primary, which he then won handily … and he never looked back.<\/p>\n

So now I’m all in for Joe.<\/p>\n

The process through which he gets my support, though, is the element I want to underscore. We live in perilous times as the nation battles a pandemic that continues to kill Americans at a heartbreaking rate. I do not want to risk becoming infected.<\/p>\n

So, if voting early enables me to do my civic duty proudly while staying safe from a killer virus, that’s the way it’s going to be.<\/p>\n\n

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I cannot even believe I am saying this, but I must blurt it out. Texas opens its polling places for early voting on Oct. 13. I intend to be among the first in line to cast my ballot for president of the United States of America. I will be wearing my mask. I’ll have my … Continue reading Going to vote early … on the first day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[1424,1496,1547,2505],"class_list":["post-44236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-early-voting","tag-election-day","tag-joe-biden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44238,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions\/44238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}