VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

It’s good to be reminded now and again what the all the idle chatter and endless political ads and social-media jockeying and viral (dis)information campaigns are all about: Your vote. Not the vote of the smartest guy in your office or on your crew— or the vote of the primary breadwinner in the family. YOUR VOTE.

In the case of a whole bunch of political professionals, what they’re really after is for people NOT to vote. There is a long tradition of voter suppression operations in the U.S., and the suppression takes many forms: Mysterious mailings go out, or robo-calls, telling voters that their polling place has been moved to a far-away location, or that the day to vote isn’t what everyone’s been saying it us. Flyers get put up warning potential voters to bring several pieces of government-issued ID or face dire consequences. Maybe the Supreme Court issues an opinion that effectively rules out an entire population – in the most recent case, a few weeks ago, basically all Native Americans living on reservations in North Dakota – from their ability to vote because the receive mail at a PO Box rather than at a street address. Maybe there’s a decades-long project meant to institute strict standards of voter ID to address the virtually nonexistent problem of voter fraud?

There’s one thing all of the above nonsense has in common: In every case, it is Republicans trying to prevent or reduce voting in predominantly Democratic areas of the country. In the case of predominantly Hispanic Dodge City, Kan., local officials simply moved the only voting place outside city limits – and a mile away from the nearest bus stop – two weeks before the midterms. Georgia has simply closed 214 polling locations in heavily Democratic areas in the last few years while purging 1.5 million minorities and people of color from their voter registration based on various criteria, such as whether or not your most recent signature is an exact, 100 percent match to the signature on file (in some cases, from decades earlier).

Why do Republicans continue to do this? Because with fewer and fewer people claiming membership in their party each year, it’s the only way they can still win elections in certain places.

The President, meanwhile, is doing his best to whip up voter turnout. How? By unleashing a torrent of outright lies to try to scare people into voting out of fear. Have you heard about “the caravan”? You know, the growing caravan of 7,000 evil Latin American gang members and Middle Eastern terrorists, who Fox News tells us are funded by the evil Jewish bogeyman George Soros and are carrying smallpox and leprosy up to the Texas border, which they’re apparently going to storm, invading our country and killing us all?

Where, I wonder, does George Soros find these people? He must have superpowers. Smallpox, after all, was eradicated from the face of the earth decades ago— the last known case was in Somalia in 1977. One other minor detail: The caravan is currently traveling on foot about a 1000 miles south of the border. Anyone know how fast a group of walking lepers can travel a thousand miles? Superhuman, these people. Oh, one more thing: Trump recently ordered 5,200 federal troops to the border to “protect” us from this caravan, only to say a few days later that he’s adding “many more.” They’ll join the 2,100 National Guard troops already there. In that time, the “caravan” has dwindled to less than 3,000. The last such group of this size to try this – you didn’t hear about them, because there wasn’t an election coming up – dwindled to about 200 people by the time they reached the U.S. border. Assuming this holds true again, that equals out to a little more than 41 U.S. troops for every “caravan” member. Geez, guys— think we can handle it?

Republicans in the House and Senate are also trying a desperate, last-minute gambit regarding your health care. After voting more than 70 times to strip existing health care plans of their protections for people with pre-existing conditions, they’re now – virtually all of them, from the President on down – trying to tell voters that, actually, no, suddenly they’re all now in favor of protecting pre-existing conditions. Hmmmm. . . could this sudden about-face have anything to do with it being election season?

In any case, Kevin Cramer will continue to hug Trump tightly around his knees and hold on for dear life. He’s still, by his own admission, going to vote the way Trump tells him to, “100%” of the time. Soybean exports? They’re gone. Trump – and Kevin – say the whole thing’s going just great. Just you wait and see. We’ll show them. Protecting your Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Kevin’s boss has already made it pretty clear that he’d rather give another tax cut to corporations and the 1%, so. . . guess who’s piggy bank they’re going to shake down for the money?

Anybody here old enough to remember when North Dakota’s entire Congressional delegation were more concerned about working for North Dakotans than they were about being petted on the head by the President?

You’ve already got someone who’s spent the last six years listening to her constituents’ needs and fighting for the rights and concerns of all North Dakotans, no matter what party they belong to or who they’re supporting for President. She’s not afraid to meet with her own constituents, to take their phone calls and answer their letters and emails —and then get to work on their behalf. To me, there’s no question that Heidi Heitkamp deserves your vote.

But whoever you’re supporting— get out there and do it!

Corey Seymour is a proud NRHS graduate who went on to study political science, economics and literature at UND and Georgetown University. A former writer and editor on the National Affairs Desk at “Rolling Stone” and at many other magazines, he now works as a senior editor at “Vogue” in New York. Write him at [email protected].