There’s more at stake than ever in 2018’s midterm election

My parents are both turning 80 next year. They retired in Florida, and yes, my dad sometimes wears black socks to the beach. They’ve been volunteering to work at their local voting center every election for almost two decades.

RELATED: King County primed for biggest midterm voter turnout ever

I was talking to my mom yesterday, as I do every weekend, and she said she was exhausted. Usually they would have around 200 voters per day at their little spot, even during presidential elections. This midterm, it’s almost five times that. They are seeing upwards of a thousand people a day. That’s a lot of assistance helping gray-hairs figure out how to use a voting booth.

You listen to KIRO — I don’t need to tell you how to vote, or even that you should vote. You already know that.

It is interesting to me to see how motivated people are to exercise their constitutional right this time. It feels like there’s a lot riding on the midterm elections this year.

If you look at just the raw numbers, America as a whole is slightly more liberal than it is conservative (at least looking at the last presidential vote). If you extrapolate it out to the non voters, it begins to skew even more liberal. More young people live in big cities, big cities are more liberal than rural areas, and fewer young people vote.

The coasts have the vast majority of the population, and they both lean liberal. The middle of the country has far fewer people, but can flex out-sized power and control in elections, hence all the hopefuls going to Iowa to kick off the election cycle.

But through a combination of our antiquated electoral college, some gerrymandering, and shrewd politics, the minority is in power in all three branches of government right now, and they are fighting like hell to keep their power.

Some of their tactics seem to have poked the bear.

History is bending towards more inclusion, more rights, and fewer religious constraints. History is also riddled with forces that tried to stem the tide of that lean. They usually fail, at least in the western world. Tyrants and dictators around the world can make life miserable for their unlucky populations, but I digress.

Who in their right mind admires tyrants and dictators?

Even if you don’t follow politics closely, and I count myself in that camp, it’s going to be quite a week. Buckle up, there are big moves coming down the road. It might be a bumpy ride for a minute, let’s try and keep the wheels out of the ditch.