I have stayed away from controversial topics on this site (I’m assuming that a woman’s right to vote is no longer controversial), but I feel obliged to wade into a discussion that has aroused a surprising amount of discord.  There is an election coming up that will determine who will occupy the White House, about one-third of Senate seats and all members of the House of Representatives.  There are important state and local elections as well.  The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution states “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  Since its passage, there have been all manners of attempts to supress voting by one group or another by various nefarious means, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, inaccessibility of polling places, stricter ID laws, etc.  While the desire to maintain integrity in the voting process is entirely understandable, so must be the right of all citizens to vote.  A founding principle of our nation is that governments should derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as stated in the Declaration of Independence.  All people who are subject to the laws and jurisdictions of the United States must, therefore, be given reasonable access to the ballot box.  What we are seeing now are polling places being closed and relocated to places that are less accessible to the affected voters.  We are also seeing obstacles created to limit the use of mail-in ballots and early voting opportunities.  These methods have been used successfully in other countries as well as in our own country, with little or no evidence of wide-spread fraud.  We are currently living in a pandemic that requires great care to be taken in limiting its spread.  We must not congregate in large groups, we must maintain physical distance from anyone who is not a member of our household, we must–especially in cases of precarious health–stay isolated as much as possible.  How, then, are we to guarantee the right–the duty–to vote if our citizens are deprived of safe ways to do so?  I urge citizens of all poliltical philosophies to support mail-in and early voting so that we do not need to endanger our health in order to participate in our democracy.  Let’s get over this pandemic hurdle and then, when there is time for careful study and consideration, let’s create voting mechanisms that are suitable to our era and which extend ready accessto the process. Only then can our government truly be said to exist by the consent of the governed.