DISENFRANCHISED

 ("Supreme Court Won't Extend Wisconsin's Deadline For Mailed Ballots")

Approximately 138 million Americans voted in the 2016 Presidential election. That seems an impressive figure until one considers that the eligible voter population was about 250 million.

We are typically a wholly unengaged electorate, with 40 percent or more of us finding inadequate reason, or for some, opportunity to participate in what is our most fundamental and critical right.

But this time is different. With a pandemic raging through our nation and a President raging at more than half of it, there is a fervor to cast a ballot. We have been witness to those who have stood for countless hours for the chance to make their preference known.

Now we are informed that procrastinators are not welcome. Our far from Supreme Court has informed Wisconsin, and, with virtual certainty, any other jurisdiction who will petition it for advice, that mail in ballots must be received, NOT MERELY CAST, by election night. So for all those whose circumstance, or nature, prevented them from sending in their vote yet, for those who have always been last minute crammers, or didn't recognize that November 3rd was merely an illusion, you are  now given a moment's notice that you are about to be disenfranchised. 

It keeps me awake this evening, knowing that five people may well have now stolen another four years for Donald Trump.  It keeps me awake knowing that our highest court, in the midst of our terrible plague, in a time where the President and his party have tried to squeeze the US postal service to the brink of extinction, find insufficient cause to extend until election day the appointed hour when ballots may be cast.  

I lie awake disheartened by the absurdity of what we have become.