After voter refusal, lease revenue bonds become at least 2 percent more expensive, because of the additional risk. So voter choice on these two matters has been established, as the voters have decreed. Virginia has done a lot to make registering easier. The other reasons are attitudes, and an attitude is always harder to change than a practicality. Each and every vote adds up to a numerical score that decides our future.
History is rife with examples of close-call elections, and two local races spring to mind easily.
In 1995, Happy Creek Supervisor James Jacobson won his place when he unseated incumbent Donald MeNeill by just seven votes. Four years earlier, in 1991, McNeill snagged his seat on the Board with a write-in campaign that put him just five votes in the lead. The right to vote is one of the most fundamental underpinnings of our country and its political philosophy. Certainly, politics can be played manipulatively, in a way that subverts the will of the people to the arrogance and ambition of a few. But withdrawing our one means of control over it is the surest way to allow, even to encourage, that kind of behavior.