“The influence over government must be shared among all the people.” Thomas Jefferson
I voted yesterday. It felt great. I used to live in Connecticut, where voting for President felt a touch performative, since the state’s electoral votes have been painted blue since the early 90’s. Now, however, I live in the swing state of Georgia, where voting is taken as seriously as peach cobbler—and peach cobbler is taken very seriously.
Early voting has been open here since Tuesday of last week. The first day attracted 310,000 voters, shattering the previous record of 136,000 set just four years ago.
1.4 million people cast their votes in the first week, about 20% of the entire eligible voting population . People here are voting hard.
I suspect the reason for the huge turnout is that folks here understand our state’s potentially determinative role in the presidential contest. Once a deep red state, the state elected two Democratic Senators in recent years and, at least for the moment, the road to the presidency now marches through Georgia like General William Tecumseh Sherman once did. (That might have been an insensitive analogy and I apologize to anybody whose home was burned to the ground during the Civil War.)