Stand Up & Be Counted... VOTE!

2020 is a major election year, as Americans will vote for a president, many senators, many governors, all congressional representatives, as well as many state legislators, sheriffs, commissioners, and all sorts of other offices, plus there will likely be many issues on state or local ballots. That doesn't mean 2019 is not important, as Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi will elect governors, as well as some other offices.

So, as we approach the 2019 and 2020 general elections in November of each of those years, be sure to follow the laws and procedures of the state where you are registered to vote. If you are not registered to vote, DO SO NOW, don't procrastinate! Call your local election office, or check for their website online, so that you know EXACTLY what you need to do to be properly registered to vote. You can also check with your state's election office. "Typically" a state's chief election officer is that state's "secretary of state," and I'm sure they all have websites in these times. Remember, in the United States, election laws are set by the individual states, the District of Columbia, or U.S. territories (like Puerto Rico or Guam, for example, although residents of the territories are United States citizens, they cannot vote for president, unless they move to a state or to the District of Columbia and then register to vote in compliance with the laws of that state). For more information to help you register to vote, or for other election questions, here is the link to the site for the "League of Women Voters:" http://www.vote411.org/  as well as the link to the "League's" overall website: https://www.lwv.org/

If you have already registered to vote, it is a very good idea to check your registration, even if you just voted in an election within the last few months, and even if your information has not changed. Some states have ways of doing this online, but just as with registering, call or check online for ways to verify or update your voter registration. Remember, even if you move just a block or two away from the address shown on your voter registration information, it might change the ward or some voting district, so keep your information up to date. Further, there are occasional mistakes by election offices, and I'm not meaning "deliberate mistakes," but there are potentially those kinds of mistakes too, so you don't want to show up to vote, only to be told that your name is not on the voter rolls, or that you are listed in another precinct or whatever. TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED! REMEMBER, the Trump regime in Washington DC, along with their participants and collaborators on the state and local level, will do ANYTHING to disqualify you from voting, or to see that your vote does not count. There have always been charges leveled at both major political parties about election shenanigans, BUT we have never had the threat to our democracy in modern times that we face now. CHECK YOUR REGISTRATION, DON'T WAIT, DO IT NOW!

 If you are in a state that uses early voting by mail, and that is your preferred method to vote, be sure to follow your state's regulations for requesting a ballot, and then follow proper procedure for filling out and mailing in your completed ballot. Elections are always important, but the coming preisdential election in 2020 is perhaps the most important election in the history of this country. And let's not EVER forget Mitch McConnell, the most EVIL man to EVER serve in the United States Senate, refusing to hold a vote on Barack Obama's selection for the Supreme Court in 2016. That appointment was instead held by McConnell for Donald Trump. Whoever wins the presidency in 2020 will almost certainly get to appoint other Supreme Court judges, and all presidents get to appoint judges in the federal judicial sysatem. If you want to live in about the 1400s (maybe even 1400 BC), you'll love all of the Trump picks, and there will not be any legal thing you can do about them. You could well lose your rights very soon.

BE SURE YOUR VOTE WILL COUNT!

WORD HISTORY:
League-There are two main words of this spelling, but this is the most commonly used noun (and the derived verb) meaning "a group of organizations or people in alliance for some common purpose." It is related to "liaison," a word borrowed by English from French, which had derived it from Latin, and to "ligament," a word English borrowed from Latin. "League" goes back to Indo European "leig," which had the meaning, "to bind." This gave Latin "ligare," with the same meaning, which passed into Italian as "legare," again with the same meaning. This produced the Italian noun "lega," meaning, "a group, an association (people bound together in common cause);" thus, "a league." This was borrowed by French in the Middle Ages as "ligue," with the same meaning. English borrowed the word in the second half of the 1400s, initially as "ligg," then later as "league." The 1800s saw the word used for associations of sports teams, a meaning still very much relevant today. The verb developed from the noun in the first part of the 1600s meaning, "to bind together to form a league," but the verb is not all that common, at least not in the United States; I'm not sure about elsewhere.