Primary Day

May 2nd, Primary Day here in Indiana. We voted after dropping Jake off at school. It gave me a bit of a thrill to see Alix's name above mine in the book. I hope she exercises her civic duty and votes today. Last year's VOD theme was (I believe) "How to Celebrate a Veteran's Service" or something of that nature. Anyway I had a chance to listen to last year's national winner and it talked about the many ways but the most important was to exercise your RIGHT to vote. It is a powerful message, one that needs to be heard over and over and over. My grandfather was a Dough Boy in the trenchs in France during WWI. Kent's grandfather not only was in France. He was in a Michigan unit called the Polar Bears which fought the Red Army in Russia after WWI. (Bet you didn't know that Americans had EVER fought in Russia.) Kent's father joined the Navy as a 17 year old in Sept of 1941 and was on the USS Franklin when it was hit by a Kamikazee plane and severely damaged in 1944. And of course both my brothers and my husband have served, my husband actually going to Kuwait during Desert Storm. All of which is to say: VOTE! Don't dishonor men and women who have given of themselves with their time and lives to give you the opportunity to choose the people who will govern our communities.

That rant over with, on to another! For the first time we had to prove our identities with a picture id. The people at the polls said they figure they will get a lot of static about it as they know 95% of the people by name and face, but it is the law. I was at the Statehouse last year when they were debating this new law. (Jake was paging for Senator Jackson at the time.) You wouldn't believe the arguements against this law. "It will disenfranchise people." Huh? (Apparently being asked to prove who you are is such a threat to some people that they won't vote. At least that is the logic (not) here.) "Some people don't have picture ids." How do they exist in this world? How can anyone not have an id of some kind? How do you cash a check? Enroll in school? Get a library card? Apply for government assistance? Even homeless people have ids. Anyway the State provided ids to anyone without one at the BMV and a ride to and fro. This still wasn't enough to placate that certain element of unreason. We'll see in tomorrows news how the voting went and if there were many turned away for not having their ids. At least they started it now and not during a Presidential election. Can you imagine the howls that would cause?