Image: Michael McRae
Having faced the new reality that money equals speech,
Now they babble by the billions at the folks they want to reach;
There’s millionaires and billionaires, each racing toward the right
And the even bigger moneybags—they’re keeping out of sight
As the voters mark their ballots, cos they know it’s what they ought,
There are votes that people earned, this year, and others that they bought
This year is Cuttledaughter’s first where she is eligible to vote (yes, I feel old, why do you ask?), and she is excited. Wants me to wait (polls have been open for a while now, but she’s still asleep) so I can keep her from getting in the wrong line or something. It’s nice to see the idealism, before it gets pulverized by repeated insults to intelligence over the decades.
Hmmm, many more hints like this (“Wants me to wait [to vote] … so I can keep her from getting in the wrong line or something.”), talk earlier about students and grading, &c. and the Cuttle is going to blow his/her cover.
Go Big Green (?)
Aww, I remember taking my kids to vote for the first time. Remember: it’s part of your parental duty to teach them to hold their noses.
My son came with me the first time he was eligible to vote, and as we left the polling station he said ‘Is that it?’
You can understand a certain bemusement at the thought of people going to prison for the right to put a piece of paper in a box.
(This is in the UK, where we still use pencils, and where we tip all the bits of paper out onto tables, and people sort them into piles and count them. Don’t knock it though, it works, and is pretty much fraud-proof.)