Don’t take it for granted. Get out and vote! Get your cousin who hates Washington and has done nothing but complain for years to vote!
(But remind your crazy progressive relatives that November 4th is the day Democrats vote)
I made a post like that on Facebook, and was banned for a week.
Just stuck my paper ballot, ensconced in multiple envelopes, in a lonely can sitting outside the main municipal building in town.
The box looks official. But who knows whether my vote will be counted.
The standard method here has been in-person voting with a low-tech machine, curtain closed, with a big red “Cast Your Vote” button. You knew your vote was going to count before you closed the curtain behind you. By then, you had already (1) told the poll worker who you were, (2) signed next to your name in the voter roll “bible”, (3) signed the smaller pad of sequentially-numbered voter tickets and been handed the tear-off receipt, and (4) handed the receipt to the guy manning the machines.
In other words, you had “run the gauntlet” and were now a “live” voter. Your choices, in the next few seconds, were going to instantly be placed in the running totals for your preferred candidates and ballot issues. You were beyond the point at which your credentials as a voter were subject to challenge.
The small but (absent voter fraud) irreducible fraction of self-governing power you wielded as a bona fide member of the voting polity was now in its most concentrated form, right at the tip of your preferred “voting” finger.
If you have any young children in need of education about what a civil society is and how it conducts itself, you had one or two of them with you to watch you, up close and personal, as you exercise your franchise.
With a quick and satisfying series of four electronic beeps forming a major chord, your preferences were recorded, anonymously and irreversibly. Automatically, and quick as a wink, the curtain opened automatically and you exited the booth to make way for the next voter.. A quick “thank you” to the poll workers, and you were on your way.
To blazes with a “new normal”. This ornery self-governing voter wants the “old normal” back. He will grouse and spit nails and make a general stink in the general direction of whomever he needs to make vaguely uncomfortable or embarrass or trigger or whatever until he gets what he wants.