The first time I did so was in 1968 - a very tumultuous year. My friends were being killed in Viet Nam. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been killed here. There was rioting in the streets. Still we went to the polls and we voted. I remember how nervously I walked into the nearby National Guard Armory to cast my ballot, and how grown up I felt when I came out.
I have voted in every election in the forty years since. Sometimes my candidates won and sometimes they didn't. Some of those I voted for turned out to be good presidents, senators and governors, some did not. But what matters most is that I voted. Whatever the outcome of this election, we should all be encouraged. Young people have gone to the polls again. Minorities who have felt disenfranchised in the past have gone to the polls, many for the first time. It appears that when the polls close there will have been a record breaking number of citizens who have voted. Regardless of who the winners will be, this nation, this republic, this democracy will be better for it.
