Although many people have taken advantage of early voting, there is something comforting about Election Day, especially when we are electing a president.

Certainly the campaigning last far too long and we have to wade through an ocean of misinformation, twisted logic, demented reasoning, half-truths, outright lies, personal shenanigans and tiresome analysis.

Our ears are pierced and eyes lacerated by the seemingly endless political ads that say little and mean less.

We are inundated with experts explaining the intricacies and nuisances of candidates and various policies until we are numb and nauseous.

Sometimes our enthusiasm for Election Day is less than great because we feel our choices are too often between the lesser of the evils. In this I am as guilty as anyone, but the important reality is that we still have the choice.

Election Day is a marvel of our government. Regardless of your political persuasion, the fact is we have this wonderful system by which we have an automatic revolution every four years to pick the leader of our country.

It has often been said democracy is a terrible form of government until compared against the alternatives.

We have elected crooks, idiots, morons, geniuses, charlatans, mountebanks, morally corrupt swine, individuals of great integrity, those with vision and those without, some from the backwoods and others from the city, people from humble backgrounds and those from the upper echelon of society.

Some have served us well, some served us poorly and some acted like they never showed up for work.
And while our system is not perfect, we have survive for almost 240 years without having a military coup and have yet to produce a Hitler or Stalin.

We do not have troops standing at the polls holding a gun and handing us a ballot already filled out.

We are free to announce our vote if we wish but are not required to tell anyone who we vote for and ultimately are answerable to only our own conscience.

After the election is over, we sometimes look at each other and mumble: how did that happen? But we know a day will come when we will have our say again.

One of the oddities of our election is how small the turnout generally is. Even when we have peak numbers, they are still usually a very small percentage of the people who are registered to vote and even smaller compared to the number who are eligible.

There are some countries where voter turnout is regularly more than 90 percent and the idea of not voting is abhorrent to the citizenry.

But even this is a remarkable element of our system. You have the right to not exercise your franchise without giving up the right to complain about the results.

Come late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, assuming we are not the victims of the dreaded hanging chad syndrome, we will know who will be living in the White House for the next four years.

No matter how it turns out, there will be many who will be disappointed, many who are excited and a good number who will shrug and hope whoever gets the job will do it well.

Daniel Webster once said, "Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and heart to this vote."

This is all we can do. It is our system, warts and all.

Ric Latarski is a freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics and can be reached at Rlatarski@aol.com.