They want you. Maybe.

You are a hot commodity, my fellow voters.
The analysts agree the key to which party prevails in Tuesday’s election is one thing: turnout.

Democrats and Republicans are in a race to turn out their voters, which is another way of saying this is not about trying to change anyone’s mind or coming to a consensus on difficult issues. This is about selectively coaxing to the polls those reliable voters whose minds are already made up and whose votes are, therefore, predictable.

That’s why elections get so expensive.

Each party has voter lists which use elaborate computer algorithms to identify, by name, who are the reliable party voters. So, by afternoon on Election Day, if you’re a reliable partisan voter and you have not voted yet, you will very likely get a phone call urging you to vote, even offering a ride.

Getting votes by actually persuading people is a tough and uncertain business, which is why so much of the political process is about finding people whose minds are already made up and getting them to vote.

You’d like to think elections are for finding out what a majority of the population wants, but voting in the United States is not so much an election – as a competitive harvest.

As the parties gin up their machinery and head off into the fields to harvest their ripest voters.