We're not going to think any worse of those readers who decide not to vote in today's municipal elections.
We take a kind of laissez-faire approach to encouraging readers to vote, believing it's up to each eligible man and woman to decide for themselves what they should do on election day without having the newspaper browbeating them into casting their ballots.
We learned long ago that you can still be a contributor to the community without voting, you can still be a “good citizen” without exercising your right to take part in deciding who will run the government.
Indeed, that you can contribute to the commonweal without voting is one of the many great things about our country.
Elsewhere, in countries that claim to be democracies, not voting is a crime, though casting a ballot at the point of a bayonet (often, in these cases, for but a single candidate) to us just takes the air out of the whole business.
It's often remarked, even boasted, that our form democracy is the world's greatest form of government.
We hold with that, despite low voter turnout — maybe even because of low turnout.
In our form of democracy, voting is an option, and opting not to vote doesn't mean later on you'll be penalized by being denied the protections of the laws or the enjoyment of your share of the rights laid out in the Constitution.
Of course, not voting may mean fewer laws for your protection or lead to much different interpretations of how those rights are applied.
Not voting doesn't disqualify you from complaining, even though, in not going to the polls and casting your ballot, any complaints you may later voice about the way things are going won't have quite the same legitimacy as the complaints of those who did take the time to cast their ballots on election day.
If history is any judge, voter turnout today will be low, despite there being many contested races, both here and in Bicknell; there are also contested races in some of the towns — for council seats in Bruceville and Sandborn and the clerk-treasurer's offices in Oaktown, Wheatland and Sandborn.
Four years ago turnout was 28 percent, and that with a contested mayoral race in Vincennes; during the previous two municipal elections turnout was in the low 30s.
Would we prefer such percentages be reversed? That all but 30 percent of eligible voters did go to the polls on election day?
Sure. But it's not enough just to cast a ballot on election day and go home contented in having “done my duty.”
It's up to each one of us to decide what type of community we are to enjoy, and while voting, at least theoretically, gives more say in the decision-making, in the end it's up to each of us to act each day in a manner that builds our community of choice.
For it's what we do outside the voting booth that will ultimately make or break our community, it's what we do on the other 364 days of the year that finally matters.