Remember: If you don't vote you can't complain! Keep your right to complain alive by voting for the candidate of your choice. Or go out and vote against the candidate you don't like. Or vote on an issue - there's lots of stuff on local ballots this time around. In Carroll County it's Code Home Rule, an issue which is so complex it has taken me nearly 3 weeks to understand it....But that's only because I'm a wonk like that. You can vote for the person whose sign is in your neighbors yard. Or against him, just to piss your neighbor off.

The whole Code Home Rule thing was a lot more clear when I realized that the land developers are against it - that makes me for it! ....

Heck, I'm even voting for a Republican tomorrow. Yep, liberal me. I'm voting for Steele because I think he's moderate and not insane. He's against the death penalty, which is a real "hot button" issue for me personally - but just that wouldn't be enough to make me vote for him. I think he's more likely to work with people "on the other side of the asle" and thus be able to get things done.

Besides, I don't think I ever forgave Cardin for messing with my father's pension when he was in a position in state government to do so. You heard it here first, or at least were reminded of it. Years and years ago he...ahem...screwed the teachers of Maryland real bad.

Yes, I know that it's a tight race and Democrats, whom I generally support, are in a fight to retake the house and senate. But I'm voting my conscience. I always have. And I can proudly say that I have voted in every election in which I have been eligable to vote since I was 18.

For me, there was no way I was not going to vote after all those women back in the time of my grandmother marched in the streets in high heeled shoes, no less, and raised all kinds of hell, and had their neighbors look at them like they had lobsters growing out of their heads at church picnics. And, shortly before I was born, African American citizens in this country had to take their lives in their hands to vote in some states. It's a sacred obligation - use it or lose it - is how I've always felt. But that's just me.

The big interest groups and corporations that have polorized politics for so many years now want you to believe that one candidate is the same as another, that there really isn't any choice, that you've only got the lesser of two or maybe three evils, and politics is so dirty that there's a mud wrestling pit in the center of the polling place. OK, actually, that last thing might actually bring people out to vote.

I've never bought into it. There is no way you can tell me that one person can't make a difference. No matter if I'm the only one who votes for my candidate, or my husband's vote cancels mine out, or whatever. I'm making my voice heard. This is America, I still have my rights, and I'm using them.

You should use yours too. So get out there. Rock the vote, shock the vote, shock yourself, your parents, your kids and these damn talking heads who think they know so much about everybody and preach "more of the same". This is our country, our state, our county, our government. We've got to get out there and take it back.