Voting Day

I remember being seventeen and looking forward to my first voting experience; making that trip to the polling place and waiting my turn to stand at the booth with my ballot. Looking back on a couple (almost) decades of voting and I'm trying to remember if that ever actually happened. For those of you who are confused by that statement, yes, I vote. However, due to the timing of my 18th birthday, going off to college, and leaving my official residence at my parents' home, I spent the next few years voting absentee. Then, about the time I was back in Oregon for good, the voters chose to implement "vote by mail."

Voting by mail does have some advantages. The powers that be feel they get a greater return on ballots. You get to vote when it's convenient and in the privacy of your own home. There is no long line of waiting for a voting booth to become available. The down side is that I've had my ballot for two weeks, voted more than a week ago, and I've had to listen to the increasingly malicious candidate advertisements anyway. I really hate that. I got really tired of listening not to what candidates intend to do, but how much they needed to denigrate the opposition.

Being eligible to vote is a rite of passage. But I wonder if 18 year olds today feel it's significance since Oregon has made is so easy to vote. Do they understand the impact their choices and choices have?