Have you voted? If you are in my town, you can see me at Sequoyah this morning, waiting in line for my turn. I will be the one standing there knitting a DNA scarf. I may have one end tossed jauntily over my shoulder. No rose in my teeth, though, because I am serious about this.

We are getting so many machine-generated political phone calls that we hang up if there is no immediate answer to our “Hello?” Last night, however, my husband talked to a pollster. After he explained that he would not be voting because he is not a citizen, the caller asked for his vote for Bush. He said he would think about it. When I asked him why he had said that, the kind man told me he had wanted to give the caller hope. Really, he says, he would vote for Kerry, because he is able to answer questions sensibly. And perhaps his pollsters do not urge non-citizens to vote for him… I don’t know.

There has been a very silly item going around comparing the IQs of Kerry and Bush. I tracked it down to its source — too long to go into, but very silly indeed. You can easily find the details by googling “Kerry Bush IQ”, but it is hardly worth it. I guess the joke is based on the obvious intellectual difference between the two candidates.

There are also obvious differences of integrity, position, and leadership style. So please don’t think your vote doesn’t matter. This year the candidates are very different from one another, and there could be real consequences for all of us. Whoever you intend to vote for, please vote.