Turnout will determine just who prevails on Tuesday’s Election Day

By the time Tuesday night is complete, we ought to know who wins all these elections that have tried to dominate our attention span in recent weeks.



Would this Elvgren cartoon need Den socialist symbol ...

Heck, in some cases, we’ll actually know who will get to serve in public office for the next four years – I don’t know of anyone who seriously thinks the Republican nominee for Cook County state’s attorney has a chance of prevailing in November.

BUT ANYBODY WHO says now they know who the Democratic nominee for that post will be is lying – and any predictions you hear now that turn out to be correct come Wednesday will, in reality, be nothing more than lucky guesses.



... added for an update?

It’s Election Day in Illinois, and all across our grand state we will get the chance to express our preferences for U.S. president, a U.S. Senate seat and other assorted posts within Congress and the General Assembly.

Along with all those judges and other court-related positions at the county level.

The key question – the one that I’m focusing my attention on come Tuesday, is turnout. How many people will actually feel compelled to show up at the polling places to cast a ballot?

Let's hope voter turnout is larger than that!

HOW MANY PEOPLE will think it important enough to express their say?

Or the real question may turn out to be; how many people will be so pathetically lazy that they won’t bother to express themselves? In which case, I’d argue they deserve whatever they get in terms of actually manages to win on this primary election cycle.

Aren't we glad this isn't a scare sight anymore?

I found it interesting to see the statements that came from the Cook County clerk’s office that said the first day of early voting in Illinois (which was on Feb. 29) produced a record-high number of votes cast (including my own at the county courthouse in Bridgeview).

We also got statements about how the total for the early voting time period was close to approaching a record, and how there were a particularly-high number of people actually registered to vote.

ALL OF WHICH might mean people care about this particular election cycle enough to vote. Or maybe they don’t?

Because political observers have noted that the concept of using early voting centers has become so commonplace that it really has no direct tie to the overall voter turnout.

Early voting is for the people who are so hard-core that they made up their minds several months ago. As for those who aren’t that set in their ways, they wait until Tuesday.

Time for all of Illinois to do its civic duty

Or perhaps they don’t bother to show up at all, if they can’t ever make up their minds.

WHICH IF YOU think about it is kind of scary; our political structure for the next four years is going to be decided by the kind of people who are indecisive and who will cast their vote if it fits within their convenience cycle.

Kind of like my teenage niece, who while I was writing this particular commentary responded to her grandfather’s request for a plastic bag by flinging it at his feet, then acting as though she had been massively inconvenienced by the whole request.

Are we supposed to feel equally grateful to those who bother to vote? Should we think they did us a favor by voting? There are times I wonder if the ideologue Republican types aren’t completely off their rocker when they say we make it too easy for people to register and cast a ballot.

After all, it is one of the ultimate perks our structure of government gives us – we are given a say in deciding who gets to run our government. Instead of what some places have; a structure in which a Donald Trump wouldn’t even dream of wanting to be president because all he’d have to do is throw his money at the public officials to get them to do his bidding!

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