Promote the Vote

              I spent my Saturday morning at the Grandville Public Library tasting grassroots democracy.  I was pleased to discover that the anger and divisions we hear so much about can't hold a candle to the eager voters making the system work. 

             I was one of many volunteers collecting signatures at libraries across the state Saturday to get the Promote the Vote proposal on the November ballot.

      You may remember a Promote the Vote petition in 2018 offering No-Excuse-Absentee voting as well as early voting, day-of-election registration, and a whole package of measures to make it easier for people to vote.  That proposal was approved by the voters long before any of us knew a pandemic would make absentee voting a necessity. 

      The 2022 Promote the Vote is sort of a continuation of the popular 2018 initiative. This one is an amendment to the constitution to finetune absentee voting with state-funded postage, more drop boxes and important protections to assure military votes mailed before election day will be counted. 

              One gentleman, who biked to the library and signed my petition before riding off again with a library book, thanked me for my service like I was a soldier. "Petitions can be a thankless task," he said. It's true. Some petitions are hard to sell. But not Promote the Vote. Most of the people I met Saturday believe in the system. They are eager to support measures to make voting easier. They want everyone to participate in our democracy and they aren't misled by shaky claims of fraud.  

                "Save your words for someone else," one lady said as she grabbed the clipboard to sign. "I'm all for this."