And the winner is … democracy. When voters endure eight-hour waits in lines to vote and get in line in pre-dawn hours to mark their ballots; when thousands of unpaid volunteers give up their weekends, their nights and more to work tirelessly for their party and their candidate; when several hundred million dollars of negative ads fail to fool the voters; when efforts to restrict the rights of citizens to vote are rejected by the courts — democracy has a real chance to prevail in the United States.

Congratulations to all the candidates — win or lose, you have made a great contribution to the democratic process as did the voters who had an unprecedented opportunity to consider differences between candidates and political parties. This was afforded us by our Constitution’s First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, a freedom demonstrated by The Gazette that printed many letters from residents expressing an opinion.

Our responsibilities as citizens have not ended. We cannot hide our head in the sand or get our news from a single partisan source and expect to make informed decisions. We should all monitor the legislative process and remind our elected leaders of promises made.

There is no disagreement that we face serious fiscal problems in this country. Let’s remind our new leaders to compromise and solve those problems.

Larry Hodgden

Cedar County

Democratic Chair

Tipton