I implore you to exercise your right to vote - democracy only works if people participate in it. Participating means showing up and marking your X for your candidate. It also means asking questions and being informed. Find reliable news sources and in some cases, go right to the candidate at local town halls or all candidates debates, their websites, or tweet at them. See if you get a good feeling about them and if they truly believe the message they are sending. I tend to ignore the polls and go with the person/party that I trust to speak for me and lead us.
Be open to any candidate - even if you've always voted one way. It's going to be an interesting race, things are changing in our country and our world, so consider the type of leader you want as we enter the 2020s.
If you already know who you're voting for and are unlikely to change, then head to the advance polls now, voting on the actual election day is foolish (I mean, why don't the polls open at 6:00 am, we have jobs!!) so if you can get it out of the way sooner, then do so.
And if you think our election cycle is long (about 40 days this time), be thankful you don't live in the US where it goes on for years!! (And if you're an American reader, heed my advice above for yourself, get informed and vote for the person you believe in.)
I am always and forever thankful that our elections don't drag on the way American elections do. That just seems like such a loooooong process. One thing I would add to this is, as much as possible, take your kids with you to vote. Let them see how the process works so that when they grow up, they'll vote too.
ReplyDeleteI am forever thankful for the people at the polling station who let our kids feed our votes into the machine (I think it was for the last provincial election) because our kids felt truly involved in the process, even though they didn't get to vote.