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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

October 12th. Election Day. � Fred Klonsky's blog

October 12th. Election Day. � Fred Klonsky's blog

October 12th. Election Day.

OCTOBER 11, 2010
Photo portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson ...

Early voting in Chicago starts today. Well. Not really. You can do it, but only at three locations in the City.

Tomorrow I can vote at the local library. And I will.

As a young man I rarely voted. In those days, the voting age was 21. Lyndon Johnson taught me that voting for a person because they would do what they promised was a dumb idea. That was in 1964, before I was old enough to actually walk into a voting booth.

By 1968 the uselessness of voting became even more clear to me. The choices for president were Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. I may have been young and crazy. But I wasn’t stupid.

I voted in the streets.

I think the first election I actually voted in was the Chicago mayor’s race between Jane Byrne and Michael Bilandic after the death of Richard Daley the elder. The people of Chicago rose up