We fought a war to get this country going then gave every land-owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than fourscore years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later, and another half-century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.

Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.

A Wikipedia article I have referenced in years past has been updated and a table showing voter turnout in a number of countries for the period 1960-1995 has been removed. Sadly, the point being made by the inclusion of that table, that the United States trails most of the world’s democracies in voter turnout, continues to be supported by more recent statistics such as those cited in a Pew Research article. We may be getting slightly better, however. 2018 turnout set a record for midterm elections as reported in this Vox article. Let us hope that continues. I noticed something in the Pew Research article that I simply hadn’t realized previously. The United States has the greatest difference between the percentage of voting-age population (VAP) actually voting and registered voters actually voting. In many countries, there is no difference at all since to be a citizen is to be allowed to vote. In other countries, the difference is trivial. In the U.S. presidential election of 2016, it was a whopping 31.1% (86.8-55.7). I found that startling. I think that means only 64.1% of the VAP is registered which rather clearly shows the importance of voter registration efforts.

I first posted the core of this article in 2014. In the original title, I claimed to not care how anyone votes. That was never entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.

This post has appeared four times under the title “I Care Not How. Only If.” and each appearance after the first started off with a defense of that title. The defense was basically, “Yeah, I do care how you vote but, even if you’re doing it wrong, I think you should.” This year I changed the title so I can skip the defense. Next year I hope to skip the explanation, too.

On January 30, the day of President Trump’s first State of the Union speech, NPR aired a Mara Liasson article entitled “The State Of Our Politics Is Divided, Mistrustful And Engaged“. The text of the article simplified this to “tribal” and “engaged” which I think would have been a better title. Those two words registered with me as I listened and they’ve stuck with me ever since. One’s bad and one’s good. One negative and the other positive. I’d long been painfully aware of the tribalism which pushed Liasson to note that “More than ever before voters and politicians seem to be taking sides not according to issues or principles or ideology but according to their political tribe.” I was much less aware of the increased engagement she saw but I have noted, with great hope, some since then. Some analysts, in fact, predict record voter turnout for a midterm election. Liasson ended her article with, “Whether you’re a woman or from an immigrant community running for the first time or a white working-class Trump supporter who voted for the first time two years ago, this renewed sense of civic responsibility is the first step to making the state of our politics less broken.” I like the way she thinks. I hope she’s right.

We fought a war to get this country going then gave every land owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than four score years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later, and another half century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.

Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.

There are so many ways to slice and dice the numbers that producing a fair and accurate measure of voter turn out may not be possible. A Wikipedia article on the subject includes a table of voter turnout in a number of countries for the period 1960-1995. The United States is at the bottom. The numbers are more than twenty years old and open to interpretation so maybe we’re doing better now or maybe we shouldn’t have been dead last even then. But even if you want to think we are better than that, being anywhere near the bottom of the list and having something in the vicinity of 50% turnout is embarrassing… and frightening.

In the original title I claimed to not care how anyone votes. That was never entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.

Last Sunday’s post was this blog’s 500th. Some blogs I follow have thousands of posts. Some, with multiple contributors, publish more than 500 posts each and every year. Many celebrated their 500th post a long time ago if they bothered to note it at all. Of course there are others that caught my attention and subscription only to fade out after a few articles. They will never reach 500. Then there are the sporadic blogs that may or may not. They start a short series of posts with “Sorry it’s been so long” then, after a return to silence, do it all over again. And I know there are many more that never caught either my attention or subscription. So, even though 500 isn’t a major milestone for everyone, I’m pretty sure that a lot more blogs don’t reach it than do. Therefore, by golly, I’m going to celebrate. And, by celebrate, I mean brag.

In the initial, “Hello again, world”, post on August 7, 2011, I stated my goal of posting at least every Sunday and, with a single exception, I’ve done that. The blog has never been focused on anything in particular but from the beginning I intended to announce road trips that were being documented elsewhere on the site and, fairly early on, I started doing some reviews. With the exception of a couple of early trip announcements that filled Sunday slots, these announcements and reviews, along with some truly “miscellaneous” posts, were in addition to the Sunday morning articles which means it didn’t take 500 weeks to reach 500 posts. It took 6 years and 8 months or about 344 weeks.

There have been 185 “formula” posts with predetermined topics and formats. 48 trip announcements and 7 year end reviews are included in that count. The other 130 are “filler” posts used when “my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting”. These are typically created in advance and can be posted without regard to date. They come from four groups. There were 11 My Apps chapters, 20 My Gear chapters, 30 My Wheels chapters, and 69 Trip Peeks. Trip Peeks and trip announcements are close to brainless. The others usually require at least a little thought and some photo editing. Trip Peeks and trip announcements require little or no photo editing and the only writing involved is a one or two paragraph summary of the associated trip. The blog was a little more than a year old when I resorted to posting the first Trip Peek. I’d completed 107 trips at the time and that seemed like an endless supply. I’ve added 41 trips since then but I’ve used the peek trick more often than expected and my “endless supply” is down to 79.

Will this blog get to 1000? Don’t know. I didn’t expect this website to live for ten years or even five and it’s closing in on twenty. The blog is hardly consistent in terms of subject matter. Topics have ranged from museums, to music, to food, to cars, to the blog itself and the tools involved. The quality might not be all that consistent either. I’m certainly not the best person to judge that but I don’t think it’s ever been horrible. Nor has it ever been earth shatteringly great. What has been consistent is the timing. Or maybe dependable is a better word. Yeah, dependable probably is the better way to describe having some sort of post every Sunday and then some. And that’s what I’m bragging about.

This post from 2014 is making its fourth appearance. Last year a pre-election post by Mike Rowe got a lot of attention and caused me to rethink my own post. I used a line of Mike’s to end last year’s preamble: “Because the truth is, the country doesn’t need voters who have to be cajoled, enticed, or persuaded to cast a ballot. We need voters who wish to participate in the process.”

Besides talking about needing only “voters who wish to participate”, Mike’s post speaks of the need for voters to be qualified. It’s possible to see the results of last year’s presidential election being partially due to the participation of unqualified voters. It’s also possible to see it as the result of non-participation by qualified voters. That non-participation is doubly troubling when it is the result of folks being denied their vote by those in power. I’m closing this year’s preamble with a line from an image that has appeared at the end of each of my pre-election day posts: “Bad politicians are elected by good people who don’t vote.”

We fought a war to get this country going then gave every land owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than four score years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later and another half century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.

Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.

There are so many ways to slice and dice the numbers that producing a fair and accurate measure of voter turn out may not be possible. A Wikipedia article  on the subject includes a table of voter turnout in a number of countries for the period 1960-1995. The United States is at the bottom. The numbers are nearly twenty years old and open to interpretation so maybe we’re doing better now or maybe we shouldn’t have been dead last even then. But even if you want to think we are better than that, being anywhere near the bottom of the list and having something in the vicinity of 50% turnout is embarrassing… and frightening.

In the title I claim to not care how anyone votes. That’s not entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.