MARK SMITH Advertisement

New to me as a relatively new arrival in Nevada is this whole matter of "early voting."

Now, if your initial reaction to what I'm going to say is to blurt in response, "Oh, you just don't understand the Nevada way of doing things," go ahead and blurt and then pass on to something more interesting. I am reasonably browned off about state conceits that really don't mean anything. They're good for license plate slogans and little else. In my experience living in six different states as an adult, people are all pretty much the same, and it doesn't matter whether they're French-Canadian factory workers in New England or salmon fishermen in Alaska.

As an example, "It's the New Hampshire way" -- the punch line to a polite driving request -- is essentially meaningless in that it implies that other states prefer obnoxious people behind the wheel and suggests that the average Granite Stater is likely to swell with pride each time he doesn't blow through a stop sign or avoids flipping someone off on the exit ramp.

Anyway ... back to early voting.

The whole idea seems to be a sop to a lazy body politic that doesn't want to have to go out of its way to take part in what is the essential basis of our system of government.

Either voting is important and shouldn't be diluted except for unavoidable absence, or it's just something we'll do at our leisure, a throwaway afterthought we can perform with a yawn.

I keep hearing phrases about freedom not being free and how it demands eternal vigilance and so forth and so on, but when it comes to that basic application of freedom -- the right to vote -- it seems that here the state wants to bend to the voters' desire for convenience.

Too lazy to go out of your way to vote? Here, let us make it easier -- you don't even have to wait for the televised debates or local candidates' nights or candidate profiles in the papers. Just make up your mind and check off the names.

And forget about the comment by Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1816, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Hard to believe any state would pander to the voters' desire for convenience by "early voting."

I know, one argument is that people work so far from home that combining employment and the franchise is difficult. There, there, don't fret your little head about having to skip out of work early to get to the polling booth, it's just a vote, after all...

Better than early voting, perhaps, would be to declare election day a holiday. Then there's no excuse for not taking part.

What ought to bother us is the possibility of even a more easy-going attitude. Hey, we've got the Internet, surely in the future we can just vote from the comfort of our computer desk at home, or even in the office. We'd literally have to lift a finger -- but no more than that.

Or we could establish drive-through polling places and maybe combine a concession stand with the ballot box. "Here's my ballot, and gimme a side of onion rings with that."

Why even have election days? Just vote when the spirit moves you.

Making things easier with no parallel effort to educate the voter will merely ensure the evolution of the uneducated voter who believes that casting a ballot is an important act but could no more explain why than he could detail the theory of relativity.

Democracy is not just words and phrases and feeling good about living in the land of liberty. Preserving it requires some effort and commitment and a feeling of real responsibility, and early voting goes counter to all three ideas.

If people are going to pick our leaders, I'd like to think they are dedicated enough to go out of their way one or two days a year to do so.

Just as I'd like to think that holidays like Independence Day will henceforth be celebrated on the appropriate date.