PAT EDWARDS
LORANE – Our ballots arrived in the mail last week and we marked them right away and dropped them into the big white ballot box in the Walmart parking lot in Eugene on Monday when we went to town. It felt good, knowing that we have done our parts in such an important responsibility in the democratic process. A few days later, we went to the website set up by the Oregon Secretary of State (google “My Vote Oregon”), and checked the status of our ballots to make sure they had been received.
Sure enough, after filling out my info, a screen popped up with the notation, “Your ballot was received on October 20, 2020.” Our votes will be counted.
I suggest that anyone who is nervous about whether or not yours are received through either mail-in or drop-off voting do the same thing to put your mind at ease. Most important of all, if you haven’t voted yet, please do so right away. Don’t take a chance by voting at the last minute as many tend to do. Get your vote in now so that you know for sure that your voice has been heard in this election.
Jim and I are registered in different parties, but we seldom vote a party line. There have been years when we have canceled out each other’s vote, but not this one. Now that we have officially voted, we are bracing ourselves for the final week of incessant campaign ads geared to try to change minds at the last minute. I don’t think this is going to happen this year in the presidential race as everyone seems to be pretty deeply entrenched in their own beliefs and loyalties.
My hope is that after the final tally is in, we can move on and work toward coming together instead of pushing further and further apart. We all have so much more in common than many of us realize. We all love our country, warts and all. I don’t know of anyone who plans to give up their citizenship. Most of us have friends and family who are opposite politically but, despite their differences, we respect them, enjoy their company, and consider them “good people.” Let’s all accentuate those qualities that we respect in each other instead of digging down to try to find things about them that we don’t agree with.
Once this pandemic is reined in, my prayer is that we can all once again get together and put not only the pandemic, behind us, but the divisiveness we are feeling among each other.
Jim and I are hoping that we still will have some years to enjoy our retirement down the road as we have always dreamed of doing, but the spikes in the new cases of Coronavirus have risen again and it continues to be a major problem for not only those of us in our purported “golden years,” but for the younger generations who are having problems moving forward with their own lives because of the obstacles to their education, careers and businesses presented by the pandemic.
This week, I fervently ask two things – vote and follow the CDC guidelines for the Coronavirus – so that we can all get back on track as soon as possible … for all of our sakes.
Website: allthingslorane.com
