EDITORIAL: Elections belong to those who vote in them

Perhaps you’ve heard that there’s a big election coming up, with tremendous stakes at every level.

We’re here to remind you that there’s a lot more going on than just the top of the ticket, where a presidential race for the ages has been shaping up for a couple years now.

This year in Guilford and Forsyth counties, we are electing a state Supreme Court justice, four members of the United States Congress, the entire council of state and several state House and Senate positions. Locally we have elections on our county commissions, our school boards and Winston-Salem City Council, all of which will touch your lives on a daily basis, much more so than whoever becomes president.

Not that the top of the ticket isn’t important. It Is! What we have at stake is the very bedrock of our democratic republic and the nature of how we have governed ourselves for the past 250 years or so. And no one truly knows how it will all shake out.

We implore you not to trust the polls. Polls can be gamed by flooding the zone with partisan nonsense, and they can be untrustworthy due to statistical anomalies like small sample size, margin of error and voter participation. They still conduct polls by phone, so ask yourself if you have answered any phone calls asking about your vote, and then ask yourself who did answer those unrecognizable phone calls on their cell phones or land lines.

This is why we don’t cover elections like horse races, instead focusing on candidates and issues, and also voters themselves.

Here’s the truth: All elections depend on voter participation, and in just about all of them the win goes to whichever candidate turns out their base and convinces swing voters to come aboard.

In local elections, like county commission or school board, a roomful of people can affect the outcome. 

So if you are able, you must vote. 

Despite recent changes, election law in NC is heavily slanted towards making it easy for people to vote. 

Early voting begins on Thursday, Oct. 17 in North Carolina, and runs through Nov. 2, just a couple days before Election Day. If you are unregistered to vote, you can do it starting Oct. 17! NC residents can register to vote throughout the Early Voting period, as long as they have an ID and have lived in their county of residence for the last 30 days. Just bring a physical copy of your ID and, if your ID doesn’t show it, a utility bill or paycheck stub that has your name and address on it.

So please, get out and vote. It’s your right as a citizen. It’s your responsibility as a citizen. It’s your duty as an American. We’re all counting on you.