Are You Going to Vote?

I told my husband Larry I wouldn't listen to any complaints about who won the 1992 election if he didn't vote. He did vote that year – and always after that, including in many primaries.

This year a lot of people don't like any of the candidates, and may use that as an excuse not to vote. Here's what American poet Ogden Nash had to say about people like that:

“Election Day Is a Holiday”

People on whom I do not bother to dote
Are people who do not bother to vote
Heaven forbid that they should ever be exempt
From contumely, obloquy, and various kinds of contempt...

They have such refined and delicate palates
That they can discover no one worthy of their ballots,
And then when someone terrible gets elected
They say There, that’s just what I expected!...

And they have discovered that if you don’t take time out to go to the polls
You can manage very nicely to get through thirty-six holes.
Oh let us cover these clever people very conspicuously with loathing,
For they are un-citizens in citizens’ clothing.

They attempt to justify their negligence
On the ground that no candidate appeals to people of their intelligence,
But I am quite sure that if Abraham Lincoln (Rep.) ran against Thomas Jefferson (Dem.),
Neither man would be appealing enough to squeeze a vote out of them.

By Ogden Nash, from The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash, 1962

Do you support our veterans and our military? Prove it. Honor the freedoms so many fought and died for. Register to vote. Then VOTE!