While the entire country and office pools, bars and restaurants go crazy over NCAA basketball (Go Kansas!), we here at the Law Offices of Laura Morask are having our own March Madness of a wide array of trials, motions, hearings and events! We hosted a candidate meet and greet for a local Park Ridge 1st Ward Aldermanic candidate, John Moran where a good time was had by all and most importantly, local residents got to talk to the candidate about issues important to the town’s future.
We all know brackets are a blast and voting for your team seems sooo important but the reality is that far less people vote in our actual elections that will impact their future and that of our country than fill out brackets! And that folks is sad.
In my humble opinion, voting is one of the three sacred duties of being an American citizen along with
Military service, and jury duty. A person simply has no right to complain about the status quo if they do not vote! Yes, I hear so many excuses; “I don’t know anything about the candidate”, “Why bother, it’s all never going to change anyways?, to the one that really bugs me; ” I was too busy and figured candidate A whom I support had enough votes, mine wouldn’t make a difference.”
To these people I say this. Learn about the candidates-they themselves and the newspapers spend a huge deal of time and energy trying to educate the public on the respective issues-not a good excuse! To the second group, I say-Well that’s nuts because it really won’t ever change if no one votes and do you want your future or the future of your children and town left up to 9% of the total population? And final excuse in my opinion is just plain crazy. History and particularly numerous local elections have taught us that upsets happen and that many of these local elections are won by literally a handful of votes-yours could have made a difference and with early voting starting and made extremely convenient this is simply a cop out. Click here for times and locations for early voting in Cook County.
If you really want to hear my soapbox, in other countries people war and die over putting a democracy in place and getting the right to vote!
So folks, we do have an upcoming April 7th election which to many may not seem like a glamorous big election with Marquis names such as for President or Governor. But it’s at the local municipal elections where the most important races occur that directly affect everything from your property taxes, to your school district, to your flooding or power outage issues.
Finally, as everyone knows in the March Madness basketball world, everyone loves an underdog and sometimes even a huge upset! If you are charged with a criminal case or a traffic/DUI case or face an administrative disciplinary hearing you may feel like a huge underdog when facing the mighty power of the government. But, at the Law Offices of Laura Morask we are passionate in our belief that with hard work and perseverance the underdog can always prevail!
