EDITORIAL: Vote early, vote informed

Published 10:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Early voting is underway for the Georgia Presidential Preference Primary and Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax special election. Local citizens can cast their ballots for the candidate of their choice through March 20 or on Election Day, Tuesday, March 24. 

We urge our readers to cast informed ballots. Study the relevant issues and how the respective candidates would address the challenges that face our nation. 

Now that Super Tuesday is behind us and the field of candidates has narrowed leading up to the Georgia presidential primary, voters have even more incentive to do their homework and go beyond rhetoric and personality and dig into platforms, plans and proposed policies. 

Campaigns should be thought of as extended job interviews. 

We are hiring our leaders and in the case of the race for the White House, we are hiring the leader of the free world, the nation’s commander in chief and ostensibly the most powerful and important position on earth. 

While Pres. Donald J. Trump is effectively unopposed in the Republican Primary, the Democratic Primary fields candidates with very different visions of our country and our future. 

Before any of us go to the polls, we should make sure that we know exactly who, and what, we are voting for in this crucial election. 

While Georgia has open primaries and no one is required to register as a member of either party when they vote, gaming the system and crossing over to vote in the other party’s primary — to muddy the field — is not really how our electoral process is supposed to work. 

Elections are not a game. 

It should be all about our future, and voters should be voting for the woman or man they think is the right person for the job — the right person to lead our nation. 

Early voting in for the Georgia presidential primary runs 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, March 2-6, March 9-13, March 16-20; and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 14 in Room 104 of the Baldwin County Courthouse, 121 N. Wilkinson St.

Election Day the polls will be open from 7 a.m.-7 p.m., March 24, at respective polling places.

Those who wish to view a sample ballot can do so on the Secretary of State’s website at http://www.mvp.sos.ga.gov/MVP.

Thus far, voters are turning out early and making their voice known. According to the secretary of state’s office, Through Sunday, 127,386 Georgians had voted early in the Presidential Preference Primary. That’s solid news.

When we show disinterest in the democratic process it leaves little for the next generation to desire to follow. The greatest civics lesson of all is them seeing the adults in their lives make a conscious decision to have their voices be heard at the polls. 

Vote. 

Vote smart.