VOTE!

If you haven’t, think about going out to the polling station and do the Deed. Vote. They don’t call it a “civic duty” for nothing.

We live, at the moment, in Winston, Virginia. The Chairman’s Farm is a small component of two former great plantations in Virginia’s rolling verdant Piedmont country. The junction of those properties combines Winston with “Greater Stevensburg,” a suburb of bustling vibrant Culpeper.

Our State has an interesting sort of history. We were one of the original colonies of Great Britain, and once swore allegiance to a King across the water. We decided we did not like that and joined in a conflict against him. We donated part of our new State to form a capital for a new nation. A few decades later, the most intense struggles of a civil war roared between Richmond and Washington, some of them periodically ranging over our Farm.

That was eventually settled with some dramatic change. We could go on about that, but we would wind up in one of those long convoluted tales that we inflict upon the gentle readership. Keeping it short, to permit your attention to focus on civic duty, we can vote in a manner we like. They call it “Absentee in Person,” which is to say it meets our criteria for legal and accountable voting in a Constitutional Republic. Our pal Arrias laid it out nicely in his morning piece yesterday, and it is worth a look if you didn’t see it at: www.vicsocotra.com.

But to vote Absentee here, we can go downtown to the Registrar’s office in person. There is no problem in finding a parking place in September for a November election day. We were the only people in line, so waiting time was minimal. We all produced valid picture identification demonstrating we actually were the people we claimed to be. The City Clerk checked the registry, and if the information agreed, handed us each a ballot sheet, once identified as an actual registered voter in this district. We fed our own ballots into the scanner after the act of voting. We consider that to be as secure as we are likely to get.

The weak point in the historic process? The Farm is out in rural Stevensburg, and the ballot contained the only issue our jurisdiction is deciding. That is who will represent the 7th Congressional District. There are only two candidates vying for a single office. We were hoping to participate in the other local races that mean so much. School Boards, for one, but all the local races are vital. We had just the two blocks. We like the candidate who has not had the chance to vote on the current lunacy, marked the ballot accordingly and stopped for a drink on the way out of town.

We did what we could do. We voted. If you haven’t, please do so. The people who are supposed to serve us up in Washington ought to remember that. So, please, VOTE.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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