Time to Vote

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves — and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

The blue curtain of the voting booth has in recent years been replaced by the green envelope of the mail-in ballot. Though different modus operandi, both safeguard what Theodore M. Hesburgh called “the civic sacrament.”

Voting remains, whatever the shade of their political leanings, a key responsibility for the registered voters in Hood River County, all 10,331 of us.

That’s the number of ballots mailed by Hood River County Elections Department for the Nov. 6 election on measures 49 and 50.

It’s early yet, but as of Friday morning, one full week after the ballots were delivered to the post office, exactly 253 ballots had been returned to the county: 2.45 percent. Election officials do expect the ballots to come back in greater numbers next week.

We encourage voters to take the time to study the two ballot measures and cast their ballots. It would be disheartening to see the turnout rate at anything less than 60 percent. The deadline is Nov. 6.

Though there are no candidate races and no “local” questions on the ballot, it is critical that all voters weigh in on the matter; ultimately, all politics is local and measures 49 and 50 affect us all.

This next phrase is hardly as eloquent as Roosevelt or Hesburgh, but critical to the civic sacrament:

Postmarks do not count.