Vote Early and Often

I know there are people who are annoyed by spam in their email inboxes.  Heaven knows, there's a lot of it, but it doesn't bother me that much.  If I don't recognize the sender, I delete it.  It's easy and painless and doesn't take that much time.

That said, I'm not sure why I get some emails that I do.  Somehow I ended up on a list for Major League Baseball, which is all right since I like baseball, but they do send a lot of messages.  I got one the other day urging me to vote in the All-Star balloting. I thought, why not, maybe I can vote for some Nationals.  I logged on to the voting site, picked out all the Nationals on the ballot, and voted for them.  Then a window popped up: "Thank you for voting!  You can vote up to 25 times for each email address!"

I hadn't expected this.  I know there are some places in the country where people say about elections that they should vote "early and often," but I never had such a chance. My mother told me that before and during World War II the area in Tennessee where she was from was controlled by a political machine which used political machine tactics including multiple votes and intimidation of voters to control offices.  When the vets came back from World War II they were having none of that and made sure no one voted more than they were supposed to and that no one was intimidated.  I'm sure they felt they had just fought a war to guarantee free and democratic elections and that's how it was going to be. Another achievement of the Greatest Generation.

So, anyhow, I voted 25 times for the boys and then checked the leaders. Not a National to be seen, and the top runners had vote totals in the millions. I felt a little funny voting more than once, but not having any of my candidates in the top ten seemed like a kind of cosmic justice. We'll have to wait and see how it all turns out.