So now you know, if you didn’t before, every vote is important this year. Presidents may or may not be able to balance the budget, bring prosperity to us all, resolve armed conflicts everywhere — there are innumerable things they can’t do with all their power — but one thing they absolutely do control is appointments to the Supreme Court and other federal courts. What we do about this current vacancy I leave to greater strategic minds, but I do know it should underscore the plea for “everybody into the (voting) pool” on November 3rd. Many of us anticipate going to the early voting sites before that date to avoid the congestion at the polling places that we had in June, but the pandemic has also taught many of us to have a Plan B involving absentee ballots, coming and going by mail. You should make your request for an absentee ballot now.
Please Mr. Postman, look and see
If there’s a ballot in your bag for me.
I was glad to see my friends Congressman-to-be Mondaire Jones, Vincent Fields and Andy Buder featured in LoHud on the White Plains demonstration to save the United States Postal Service from the depredations of The Donald. I was honored to speak at the New Rochelle rally.
When I spoke last month outside the main New Rochelle post office, I was moved to speak about my paternal grandfather, John J. Maher. I have written about the mostly Italian roots on my mother’s side, for example, about my great-grandfather Joseph Del Giudice [ https://electdamonmaher.com/atlantic-crossings/], but not about my father’s all-Irish side. My father’s father was the postmaster of Hastings-on-Hudson, that small village just north of Yonkers where his father — my great-grandfather — landed from Ireland ca.1865. Postmaster Maher dressed for work every day, into the early 1960s, in a three-piece suit with watch chain in the vest, starched collar and spats, and of course a fedora on his immaculately groomed head. Dressed that way and maintaining a dignified and serious bearing, he was referred to as “the Judge”. The job carried prestige and demanded dignity at that time. Your local postman was a community fixture and mail was delivered overnight… for 4 cents!
Now we have disrespect for the Postal Service at the highest levels of government and a concerted attempt to take away the time and tools that postal workers need to help their customers and reliably deliver absentee and other mail-in ballots.
But riding to the rescue are my good friends State Senator Allessandra Biaggi and US Congress nominee Mondaire Jones, and others, who sued and just won a court order requiring the Trump Administration and its feckless, reckless Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to staff mail delivery properly and send elections ballots out by First-Class Mail.
Oh, whoa-oh Mister Po-oh-oh-oh-stman….
Deliver the ballot,
Democracy’s mallet!
Okay, you try to rhyme something clever with “ballot.” But seriously, we need to stay on top of the Postal Service issue and not let it fade as we enter ballot application and mail-in time here and across the nation.