the first time I voted

 The reason we have mail-in and early voting is so that more people (not just black people), can vote.  Some people work on Tuesdays, some people have a hard time getting around.  What is wrong with getting more people to the polls?  Aren't we always urging people to go out and vote, why not make it easier for them?

And it doesn't make more work.  Every vote has to be counted no matter where or how it is voted.  With a mail in vote you don't need guys like me to tell you how to slip the ballot into the machine, and with big early voting centers you don't have to set up so many little neighborhood polling places.  I have to admit though that I love the neighborhood polling places.  I couldn't use mine this last time because I was away from my polling Tuesday so I went to an early vote center, and it was easy like going to the supermarket, but I didn't get that feeling like Joe America in a Rockwell painting that the friendly neighborhood place gives you.

There have been and continue to be efforts made to keep black people out of the polling places.  There are efforts to make them supply ID they may not have and their neighborhoods often get fewer polling places.  In Texas they had one drop box for each district so that the city of Houston had exactly one box the same as in all the podunk little towns.

And it takes longer to count the ballots because in places where the Trumpies have seized the legislatures they don't allow them to count any mail in ballots until after the election.

Which gets me to thinking about the first time I ever voted.  I first became eligible to vote in the 1966 mid terms, but I was pretty hippie then and voting was square.  By the time the election of 68 came around they were drafting us into that crazy Asian war so we become a bit more political.  I certainly did not like Nixon (though I had been for him back in 60), and Humphrey (Dump the Hump) was being held back from saying anything bad about the war by Lyndon.  For me at the time Dick Gregory's Peace and Freedom was the obvious solution.

But did I have the courage of my convictions?  I was afraid that once I got into that dark booth alone, that a sudden temptation to not throw my vote away might overcome me and cause me to pull the lever for (Yuck) the democratic party???  With the wisdom of youth I avoided that conundrum by never registering to vote.

By 70 I had avoided the draft by doing my CO work in Herrin IL, and Adlai III was running against Ralph Tyler Smith a bumptious blowhard from Granite City (wiki informs me that he was Karl Rove's first client) for Illinois senator.  I kind of liked egg-headed Adlai, but not enough to go to all the hard work of voting for him. 

But then Ralph Tyler Smith ran an ad where half of Adlai's head looked normal and the other half was all hair and headbands and assorted hippie crapola, the thrust being don't vote for this guy, he is a lousy hippie.  Naturally that got my dander up and I went straight out and registered and come November I pulled the lever and Adlai went on to victory, and I have voted in every election since.