22 October—Around 200 voters queued up at Litchfield Town Hall to cast their early in-person ballots yesterday, the first day of early voting in a general election (as opposed to a party primary) in Connecticut. Certainly impressive. But since the early voters had to wait in line anyway, what was the purpose? I suspect the novelty of early voting attracted the first-day crowd and that fewer and fewer early voters will cast their ballots as each day passes until the early-voting window closes 3 November, two days before Election Day.

So in the interest of total convenience, eliminating queues, and not wasting taxpayer money on extra election workers, early in-person early voting should be rescinded and then—and only then—a state constitutional amendment enacted to enable unconditional absentee voting. Or we can simply revert to the way it was before the early voting nonsense. Because it’s been working fine.

🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️

Megan McArdle wrote a column the other day about the necessity for age limits for presidential candidates. The 51-year-old allegedly Libertarian political columnist arbitrarily suggested 72 as the upper limit. She naturally cited 81-year-old Joe Biden’s apparent cognitive decline even before his disastrous performance in June and 78-year-old Donald Trump’s blatantly bizarre behavior.

Megan also cited an unspecified “2022 study” that found “roughly one-third of Americans over age 65 have some form of cognitive impairment.” And if that’s not enough, she observed, “the older you get, the bigger the risk that your mind will start to go. Anyone who has cared for an aging parent or grandparent knows how suddenly that can happen: a stroke, a heart attack or an illness can impact a senior’s cognitive capacity, even if they don’t develop dementia.” Whoda thunk.

Only a third of supra-65 Americans have some form of cognitive impairment? Wow, that’s really encouraging for us superannuated wrinklies. But what about all the sub-65 youngsters who have suffered stroke, heart attack, or illness that impacted their cognitive capacity. And what about all the youngsters who are cognitively impaired without benefit of heart attack, stroke, or illness—many of whom manage to thrive in politics?

Megan concludes her column: “It’s too late to fix that problem for this election. If Trump wins, we must hope he remains healthy throughout his term, or that if something happens JD Vance can smoothly assume power before a crisis occurs. But we should act now to protect future Americans from the possibility of a president who cannot do the job and cannot be forced out either.”

That opens up a can of questionable worms. On second thought, maybe that should be wormy questions. That’s what happens when your cognitive gets impaired . . .