After long suffering, voters, candidates deserve thanks
Pub Date: 11/1/2006
By Rich Miller, Exec. Dir.
Gaming Industry Association
Shortly after you have read this, the elections will be over and the voters will have spoken.
The long suffering TV viewers will have been relieved from the constant barrage of candidate ads and the newspapers will have stopped running pages and pages of letters to the editor supporting or attacking one candidate or
another.
The yard signs will have disappeared as will the signs along the roadside.
Your mailbox will be less full of solicitations for your money or your vote and you won't come home to flyers stuck in your door.
You won't be getting calls in the evening, probably right in the middle of dinner, asking your opinion about candidate X or Y or, more irritating, push polls trying to influence your opinion about the same candidates.
When it is all over, please, take a minute to think about what has just happened. You have just participated in a process that over 90 percent of the people on earth will never experience.
Yes, the process may be too long and too costly and too negative, but at least we, as Americans, have a process that peacefully allows us to decide who repre sents us in all phases of government.
So, to the candidates, whether you were elected or not, thank you.
Thank you for caring enough about the state of our State to have taken the time and energy to put yourself out there. Thanks for raising the money to air the ads we loved or hated, the letters that got us thinking over our morning coffee, the polls that made us think about how we really felt and for participating in the debates, forums and front porch conversations.
And to the voters, thanks for taking the time to listen and for putting your money where your mouth was and supporting the candidates of your choice, despite all the negatives that go along with elections. But, most of all thank you for voting. Without you it would not be possible.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, Nov., 2006, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.