I really love early voting

Keith Lawrence, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.
·2 min read

This year marks 60 years that I’ve been voting.

Kentucky was one of a handful of states that allowed voting by 18 year olds in 1965, when I cast my first ballot.

The rest of the country didn’t catch up until 1971.

I voted by mail when I was in college and when I was in the Army.

But mostly, I’ve made my way to the polls to vote through the years.

The only time I can remember not voting was one year when U.S. Rep. William H. Natcher was facing a primary challenge from some guy he had already beaten several times in the past.

I skipped that one.

But I love voting.

And I really love the early voting that lets us cast our ballots before election day.

Things go much more smoothly this way.

And I love the Sportscenter as a polling place.

I’ve voted in people’s garages, in a church and in a school through the years.

But the Sportscenter is the best because it has plenty of parking and lots of voting booths to speed the process.

This year, if you live outside the city, there’s not a lot to vote for in the primary.

There’s a wet-dry election in Yelvington, if you live there.

Republicans who live outside the city only have the presidential race to vote in.

And everybody but Donald Trump has already dropped out.

Democrats outside the city have the presidential race and a race to nominate a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the Second District.

In the city, nine candidates are running for city commissioner.

The voting will eliminate one of them and the other eight will advance to the November general election.

Five people are running for mayor.

And the two with the most votes will move on to November.

For city voters, it’s an important election.

We have to decide what we want to happen here in the next two years.

And we have to decide which candidates will be able to do that.

Happy voting!

See you at the polls.