www.thornwalker.com/ditch/sally_02.htm

Dear Nick ...

A usually nondiscriminatory,
temporally progressive
letter from Sally Druthers
about the Big Election
 

October 31, 2004

Dear Nick —

As I do every election year, I've been reading your Website, looking to it for help in casting an informed ballot. You perform a real service for us undecided voters because you always put your finger on just the right ideas to clarify the issues.

So I'm hoping you can explain something to me.

I've been hearing a lot about something called "early voting." I guess a lot of states are letting people vote before the election even if they aren't planning to be out of the country or go to jail or something.

But is this really something new? I mean, some of those people are going to die before Election Day. It's just an actuarial certainty, right? And I guess that's how John Kennedy got all those dead people in Chicago to vote for him in 1960. 'Cause you can't not count someone's vote just because he died before Election Day, right?

Anyone can see that that would be discrimination. And discrimination of any sort is usually wrong.

And that's why I'm writing you. It's all confusing because sometimes when dead people vote it's early voting and that's okay; they didn't know, and it's not like they wanted to die then. And sometimes it's cheating if they're too dead to fill out their ballots when early voting started. There's a lot of discrimination going on this year that I don't think anyone is talking about, and I'm hoping you will expose it and maybe get something done about it.

Everyone wants to do something for those poor people who want to vote early before they die. But what about those who aren't going to die, but who just tend to put things off? Being a procrastinator doesn't mean you're a bad person; and it may not even be your fault. I think there's a procrastinator gene somewhere, but no one's been able to find it yet, and maybe they haven't even gotten around to looking.

Anyway, I think there should be some provision for those of us who want to vote late. And I think there are lots of good reasons for allowing late voting. For one thing, it gives those of us who may be undecided a little more time to make up our minds. You know, one of the things that might influence a person is finding out whether a candidate is a poor loser or a gracious winner. Everyone knows that a candidate's speeches have some effect on the outcome. Maybe we should be allowed to make up our minds after we have heard the concession speeches.

And it would reduce voter fraud. After all, everyone who votes late can prove he wasn't dead before Election Day. None of the early voters can do that; they all get stigmatized just because a few of them vote after they die instead of before, and they ruin it for everybody else.

And I think late voters cast meaningful ballots. You know how everyone says that when you vote for one of the third-party candidates, you're just throwing away your vote? And you want to vote for the candidate who can beat the other guy. Well, if you wait until after Election Day, you know who the other guy is, and you don't waste your vote by voting for some loser. And if they'd allow late voting, nobody would have to.

But most of all, it's just the right thing to do. Because discrimination is usually wrong, and late voters have been discriminated against for too long. No one ever counts their votes and in America everyone's vote should count for something.

So I'm hoping that you'll get behind this reform. We need to act really fast so that it will be in place after the election when the late voters will want to vote.

All my love,
Sally Druthers

Receiving this letter from TLD's old friend Sally Druthers has made it a Happy Halloween for me indeed. I have forwarded her proposals for extended consideration by our Committee to Advance Technocratic Objectives. Ms. Druthers's insights, I believe, are positively pregnant with exciting possibilities. I had thought that we in The Ditch, and our sympathizers, were out of time; but now our ingenious friend has set me to wondering whether time might be on our side after all, if we would only look at things from the other end of the clock. As it were.

I derive a warm glow, too, from this renewed demonstration that today's Advocates for Mental Wellness are persisting in their enlightened policy of enabling the Protractedly Undecided to empower themselves through access to the Internet, under Proper Supervision, of course.

Nicholas Strakon

© 2004 WTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.

An earlier communique
from Ms. Druthers
(October 2003)

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