Last Thursday, Illinois joined eight other states in opening early in-person voting. Before the end of October, 41 states and D.C. will have in-person early voting. For all intents and purposes, the 2020 election has already started.
If voting starts over a month before election day, why are so many people waiting until Nov. 3 to cast their ballot?
We have all experienced the long lines and insane wait times that have become synonymous with voting. Given the public safety concerns stemming from the pandemic, we must avoid a repeat of past elections.
Decided voters who choose to cast their ballot in person should take advantage of the state’s election laws and vote before Nov. 3 to protect themselves and others from crowded polling locations where social distancing guidelines cannot be properly followed.
Varun Sree, Aurora
An insulting debate
The first presidential debate of 2020 was an insult to anyone with a brain. The voter learned no new policy initiatives or explanations of old ones. Trump interrupted Biden 70-some times and he interrupted the moderator, Chris Wallace, too.
Many pundits the next morning tried to analyze Trump’s strategy. I heard everything from, “He wanted to come out strong” or “He wanted to rattle Biden so that he would stutter.” While those things may be part of the immediate one-night strategy, one other thought occurred to me.
If voters were turned off by the lying, bickering, constant talking over each other, and lack of any semblance of an intelligent exchange of ideas, they may just not vote. Trump has said many times that “high voter turnout is not good for Republicans.” In 2020, we do not have literacy tests or grandfather clauses. Voter suppressionists are much more clever.
The next two sponsors of the presidential debates should bow out now. The public would be better served by watching their regularly scheduled programs.
Jan Goldberg, Riverside
What America should have said
“Will you shut up, man?” is what our whole country should have said to Donald Trump four years ago.
Richard A. Stewart, West Ridge
Punish Dread Head Cowboy
Adam Hollingsworth, aka the “Dread Head Cowboy” deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law for his extreme cruelty to the horse, Nunu, which he forcibly rode for eight miles on a cement expressway to the point of exhaustion, without shoes on her hooves, a saddle without padding, and no water.
His protest against the killing of Black children is a just cause, and the killing must stop. He wanted attention and got it — the wrong kind.
Donna Jacob, Highland Park
