Early voting a perk or scam? Or just a reason for malcontents to complain?

The early voting centers for Cook County opened this week, which means some people have already managed to cast their vote for Hillary vs. The Donald, and all the other political posts that are up for grabs this election cycle.

Cook County Clerk David Orr was among those who used Early Voting on Monday. Photo provided by county clerk's office

I didn’t get a chance to do so Monday, but likely will find time to do so in the next few days. The reporter-type person in me finds it easier to deal with working on Election Day if I don’t have to take time to wait at a polling place for my turn to cast a ballot.

I’M SURE MANY other people find a similar convenience, which justifies in their minds use of an early voting center. Of course, I’d argue anything that encourages more people to vote is a good thing. As it is, more than 25,000 people used early voting centers in Cook County on the first day they were available – a new record that nearly doubles the old mark set Oct. 22, 2012!

The only people who want to limit the vote are those people who fear that the electorate will toss them out of political office on their fannies, Which is our right as the public to do. It’s certainly more our right than those people who want to make a crusade out of packing a pistol in public – and probably wish they could carry one into the polling place on the off-chance someone makes them feel threatened.

Perhaps being near people who find it within themselves to back Hillary Clinton will terrify all those Trump-types to the point where they feel compelled to let loose.

But the bottom-line is that early voting has become a convenience factor. And while I like the idea in theory of a single day in which the masses of our nation come together to express our political will, it just might not be practical.

I’VE BEEN THINKING quite a bit about this in recent days, ever since I happened to stumble onto an Indianapolis radio station that had a knuckleheaded host complain about the early-voting concept.

He views it as being borderline subversive. He wants it totally done away with.

He thinks anybody who actually votes early is being irresponsible and ought to have their ballot taken away from them.

For he argued with a straight voice (I’d say straight face, but being radio, I couldn’t see it) that people who cast their ballots prior to Election Day are depriving themselves the information they’d get about all the candidates if they waited.

AS IN HE thinks there is something special about the inevitable tidbit of sleaze that gets spewed right before Election Day; in hopes that one candidate can use to scare off voters from casting ballots for their opposition.

Considering that Trump’s daughter-in-law recently went on a television talk show and told of the last-minute surprise that Donald has in store for Hillary (what, she wouldn’t say. We’ll just have to wait and see), I would expect that Trump will come up with some borderline-libelous tidbit about Clinton.

Then again, his whole campaign has been nothing but classless drips and drabs that were meant to take down others – but have only served to show the electorate just how classless and tacky Trump himself is.

Actually, I believe anybody who seriously lets themselves get influenced by the last-minute nonsense is the one who is potentially reckless enough that we ought to think of taking away their ballot!

BESIDES, I CAN’T help but think that most people have privately made up their minds. Anybody who is so indecisive that they don’t know yet between Clinton and Trump is just being wishy-washy.

If anything, I have been ready for the final vote for weeks now. Besides, if we’re really supposed to wait for all the trivial tidbits that can be offered up, perhaps we should postpone Election Day. Give even more time for us to supposedly learn more dirt about the people who managed to get their political parties’ presidential nominations.

But that’s not going to happen. I suspect most people want this whole nonsensical process to end – and will be prepared to stone me for even jokingly hinting that it should last any longer than necessarily.

In short, when I cast my ballot, it will be to ensure I express my say in this electoral process – one that Trump has tried to delegitimize as much as he can perhaps because he knows it’s not rigged; and he fears the outcome of an honest election.

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