Younger Daughter exercises the franchise

Younger Daughter turned 18 last September, so this coming primary is the first in which she'd be eligible to vote.

But first she had to register.

Younger Daughter's regular route to school each day takes her within a couple of blocks of the Skokie Courthouse, and she had a myriad of other registration options besides.

Here in Cook County we take voting very seriously. It is a lifelong obligation... in fact, in Chicago, sometimes the urge to vote seems to continue long after life ends.

But Younger Daughter wasn't yet with the program. Weeks went by following her birthday, then months, and soon the media were announcing that the deadline for registration was upon us. Younger Daughter was still not registered.

I put my foot down: I told her if she didn't take the car over to the courthouse and get herself registered she wasn't going to be taking the car anywhere for quite a while.

Yes, that's the nuclear option.

Sometimes it must be threatened.

Sure enough, the very next day, Younger Daughter managed to find the time to register to vote. Her registration card arrived just the other day... as did the realization that she would not be in the jurisdiction on Election Day.

She's set for a band outing, starting during the Super Bowl and ending late on Election Day.

There's something extremely un-American about this trip, don't you think?

But -- particularly in Cook County -- there's always a way to vote.

Younger Daughter could, under these circumstances, legitimately request an absentee ballot or she could vote early. One of the neighborhood libraries was designated as an early voting site.

She chose the latter option.

Now there are a lot of races in Cook County on Super Tuesday besides the Presidential primary. We have a hotly contested State's Attorney's race, for example. In our ward, there's also a very hotly contested race for Democratic Committeeman. And there are nine countywide Circuit Court vacancies at stake and three vacancies in our home subcircuit.

Cook County being effectively a one party state, like Cuba or many of the now-independent former Soviet republics, the winners of the judicial primary races will be uncontested in the November election. And, as a lawyer, I have a particular interest in the judicial races -- these are the men and women who may be throwing my cases out of court in the very near future, causing my family to starve. So you might think my daughter would ask my opinion about who to vote for, right? You might even think that, as a first time voter, she'd be energized into doing her own research into the various offices and candidates.

Of course, if you thought any of that, you'd be wrong.

After she voted, we asked Younger Daughter about her choices. She remembered who she voted for for President (and she was shocked to find out she was voting for delegates to the nominating convention, too)... but she couldn't remember much about who else was on the ballot. There were so many names, she said.

And people wonder why I fear for the future.