Rant #2,255: Elected

Well, have you voted yet?

Today is Election Day, and by the time that many of you read this, the polls will be open.

In New York, the polls open up at 6:00 a.m., and I plan on being one of the first ones there, as I always am, to beat the crowds and do what my civic duty tells me to do, so right now, around 4:30 a.m., we are not quite there yet, but getting there quickly.

I know it is pollyannish, but the fact of the matter is that it is most important to vote, whoever you vote for.

This is a right that people have fought for and died for, and if you don't use this right, then you have no right to criticize your officials, who were elected by the populace.

Me, I will be voting for candidates that hold my beliefs in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sure, that is pollyannish in itself, but so many of the candidates running today do not hold those same virtues as I do.

We have politicians who claim that this country has never been great, and stand for things that I would never stand for, including being anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, being backers of the Common Core educational system, and those who would put non-citizens rights at least on the par of mine.

I cannot vote for any candidate who has those beliefs, and I cannot see why anyone would vote for such candidates, but they do.

It should be an interesting time today.

And now I go back to 1972, when a song called "Elected" actually made the Top 30 on Billboard's Hot 100 charts.

It was by Alice Cooper, who was starting to morph over from a band name to the name of its leader at this time. The album that this song came from, "Billion Dollar Babies," certainly cemented this move, and the popularity of this song and others on the album led this record to become one of Alice Cooper's biggest hit LPs.

In actuality, "Elected" had been around since the late 1960s, when the Alice Cooper Band had just started their careers. It is a somewhat reworked version of the band's debut 45, called "Reflected."

"Elected" did fairly well in the U.S., but it even did better overseas. The song reached No. 4 on the U.K. charts, and reached the upper reaches of the charts in several other countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria.

So while people were going to the polls in 1972, they voted with their wallets on "Elected," and during this very time during that year, it rose up the charts.

No, it wasn't "Snoopy For President," but I guess it was good enough, the perfect record for this time of year.

And I implore you, if you are sitting on the fence about voting this year--you don't have the time, you don't know who to vote for, the whole process bores you--get up off your carcass and vote.

It is well worth the effort.