This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

If you spend too much time reading newspapers, as I do, it is easy to forget several key notions about elections, such as one under way today across the country. 

Or, if you are from Oregon as I am, the mail ballot election has been under way for a couple weeks and ends for us at 8 p.m. today, Pacific time.

Today is the first mid-term election since the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.  Since then, it has become increasingly clear that the grave threat to American democracy posed on that day was no aberration; it was a prelude to a broader right-wing movement to undermine our electoral process.

So, as we wait for election results, some of which won’t come tonight (as in Clackamas County where the controversial and unqualified county clerk there says the first results won’t be posted until Wednesday) in races that are particularly close.

To avoid the “horse-race tendency” of many news outlets, I list here a few impressions about elections which are worth remembering on this “election day:”

• WE SHOULD VALUE ELECTIONS AS A WAY TO CHOOSE OUR OWN POLITICAL LEADERS

Don’t forget this as you cast your ballot.  Instead, we could be living in a dictatorship with someone else imposing his or her will on us.

Columnist Gary Abernathy said it well in the Washington Post a couple days ago:

“While it’s (elections) always been a serious business, there should also be a joy to the democracy, a celebration of process.  We live in a free country and get to decide who our leaders are going to be.  That’s a big responsibility – but we also should have fun while doing it.”

• WE SHOULD EXERCISE OUR RIGHT TO VOTE AND, AS THEY SAY AT NIKE, “JUST DO IT.”

So, just do it – vote.

• ONE VOTE MATTERS.

Sometimes there is a tendency to lost sight of this reality.  On occasion, local races are decided by just a few votes – so yours’ could be critical.

Statewide or nationally, no, your vote might not determine the outcome.  But, it does matter.  And, when you cast it, you take heart in your commitment to solid citizenship.

• RECOGNIZE, NOT JUST YOUR VOTE ON INDIVIDUAL MATTERS OR CANDIDATES, BUT CONSIDER THE BIG PICTURE

This admonition is one of the reasons I read both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post every day.

The Journal gives me a right-of-center perspective, but still center, not wacky right.

The Post gives me a left-of-center perspective, but still center, not wacky left.

In both cases, I focus, not just on individual news stories, as important as those may be, but also on commentary – or opinion – which is clearly marked, an important task for any reputable journalism organization.

Varied opinion gives me a sense of the big picture that is at stake in any election.

This time around, as is the case in many mid-terms, the party in charge of both the White House and Congress, Democrats, may suffer substantial losses.  But focus, not just on the story about who wins or loses, but about what results may mean on policy grounds.

Reading the various opinion pieces give me pause as an American.  With major Republican advances, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of democracy as we know it.

Which is another reason to vote – and to vote smart.

Also, if the question of “why vote” persists, consider this from President Franklin D. Roosevelt 80 years go.

He emphasized “four essential human freedoms” in a what was then a crisis for the nation, which could be mirrored today:

“I imagine a future in which all of humanity enjoys the ‘four essential human freedoms’ — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  This is no vision of a distant millennium; the United States is still striving to achieve those freedoms today.”

Roosevelt’s message remains as urgently relevant as ever today as we anticipate mid-term elections results and implications.