Oregon Legal Research Blog
The ballot deadline is January 26, 2010. Please don’t mail your ballot at this point. Please find a drop box.
It has been said that people spend more time shopping for a TV than they do mulling over an election ballot. For crying out loud, in Oregon you can fill in your ballot while sitting in a comfy chair, drinking a beverage of choice, and mumbling or ranting to your heart’s content.
If you don’t vote you can’t complain. People around the world and through the centuries know that maintaining a democracy is a lifetime effort (and sometimes a death-defying one). You can’t vote once and expect to find yourself in Shangri-La (which may not be your cup of tea anyway). And voting once or twice a year is the minimum entrance requirement for keeping a country a free republic. It takes more, much more.
Look around at advocacy groups, and advocates, who devote lifetimes to making the world a better place for the rest of us. They don’t just Vote and Complain. They volunteer, the write, they blog.
If you didn’t register to vote in this election, make it your 2010 resolution to register to vote in the next one, which may be here sooner than you can say, Mail-in Ballot!
May you live in interesting times!