Dear John:

Hours to go now. Are you ready for the election to be over? (Goodness, help those who want it to go on longer!)

The work will continue until 8 o'clock tomorrow night. Nonetheless, I find myself reflecting on this, the most consequential election of my life.

But I confess: I have always had a love affair with elections. It's not just the excitement and the stakes and the drama and sometimes, the amazing theater of it. It is this very concept of self-determination, a belief that we can chart our own future with the power of our voting franchise.

Collectively, if we're being honest, we don't always make the very best decisions. But in a democracy, we always retain the power to correct our course and learn from our mistakes or to respond to the events of the day.

We are 248 years into this great experiment – two years away from (fancy word alert!) our semiquincentennial. (Turns out I even have the honor to chair our state's 250th celebration.)

As such, we are the oldest continuously functioning democracy on the planet. So much has been sacrificed — many lives, innumerable treasure, and more — in the name of a belief that we are ultimately capable of governing ourselves. We honor all that by participating with our vote.

So, if you haven't already dropped your ballot off at a ballot box, please do so.

If you already have, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Yours in Democracy,

Denny

I've been "practicing democracy" for a long time. Here I am as a freshman member of the State House in 1977. My fashion sense then (and perhaps now as I tend to only wear Gonzaga polo shirts or sweatshirts) was, well, a hot mess.