It’s time to go to the poles and cast your vote. And be glad you can.

They don’t much teach this in our myth-building junior high history classes, but for the first 50 years of this country, only about 15% of the adult population had the right to vote (white, male property owners). Black men nominally recieved the right to vote with their emancipation during the Civil War, but they were largely denied that right until the passage of the Voting Rights Act 41 years ago. Women got the right to vote in 1920. The universal right for adults to participate in American democracy occurred in my lifetime. I don’t take it for granted.