Ah, the smell of Vicks Vapo-Rub in the morning!

Flu season.

Cold season.

Huge numbers of people sick as a dog and either stuck at home or contagious.

Is this a good time to vote?

Why do we make folks go stand in long lines in lousy weather, extending into overheated buildings crowded with lots of coughing, sneezing people?

Why don’t we do this some fine summer day?

We could schedule new terms to begin also in summer.

Haven't we already lost one president (William Henry Harrison) to pneumonia contracted giving an inauguration speech?

Isn't that enough?

How many voters have we lost to sickness contracted in the process of voting?

And why isn’t Election Day a national holiday so everybody has off work?

This is allegedly a democracy.

Don't they want us all to vote?

Ha, ha.

A highly publicized, months-long, national effort to suppress the vote among the poor, the elderly, and especially the non-white - voter ID is just the tip of the iceberg - is not a good start for future Republican efforts to bring blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities into their "big tent."

Do they really think all this will be soon forgotten?

Or forgiven?