Today is Election Day, though many Americans (in states that allow it) have already voted, either in-person or by mail. So if you have any problems voting today – including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues – call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. (In Spanish, that phone number is 1.888.839.8682, or 1.888.VE-Y-VOTA. See other phone numbers at the Election Protection website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931. I remain worried that bad Americans will harass good Americans at the polls, but if our enemies are smart (and, despite appearances, they are) they'll also try to obstruct the vote-counting wherever it happens, so you may want to go to your state's Secretary of State website, find out where they're counting the votes in your area, and call 1.866.OUR.VOTE if you see anything untoward. Don’t be skittish about making such calls, because our enemies sure aren’t skittish about preventing good Americans from voting.
Voting, as I've often said, is a citizen's minimum duty in America – this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. Our politicians would prefer that you vote for them on Election Day and then just shut your yap, but over the years, more and more of us have hounded our elected officials the way we should, and they listen more than they used to – certainly more than they did during the Bush/Obama years. The last four years have seen monopolies take a body blow from which they won't recover for at least six more years (when our FTC updates antitrust enforcement guidelines again); it was the right battle for Joe Biden to pick, and he most certainly paid for it by being hounded out of the Democratic Presidential nomination by his own party and by our "liberal" media. The last four years have also seen major climate change and health care reform legislation pass, as well as bipartisan infrastructure legislation that has at least made "government spending money to build good stuff" possible again, and a virtual neutering of House Republicans' ability to hold everyone hostage to stupid legislative demands. I wish I could say America is a more perfect union than it was four years ago, but only we can make it one, and I know for a fact it's a more perfect union than it would have been if we'd simply given up after 2016 – or "let Biden handle it" after 2020.
But while voting is our minimum duty, our work on every day thereafter will be much harder if we don’t turn all the bad politicians out of office we can. And there are only bad reasons for not voting. Negative campaigning is an especially bad one, though, frankly, the choice has been made easier by the major political parties this year, as Republicans have run mostly negative, empty, and angry ads and Democrats (perhaps having learned from Hillary Clinton's failed "just let Trump's ramblings write our ads for us" strategy) run mostly positive, substantive, and uplifting ads. So let's get out there and vote today – and then tomorrow, let's get back to giving our elected leaders, whomever they may be, the what-for they most definitely deserve. Sadly, that task will probably also include having to keep fighting for the electoral victories we’ve already won, as the Trump campaign plans to contest any vote-counting that doesn’t go their way. I expect, in fact, that their efforts will be worse than last time. But at least we can be prepared.