By all accounts, the vote on the levy will be close.
An anti-levy activist today predicted that the levy will win this time by 53 percent to 47 percent.
A top ranking Morgan County Republican, who is for the levy, today predicted that the levy will win by 60 percent to 40 percent.
But Jeannie Ford, the leader of the anti-levy group, yesterday predicted that the levy will lose — same as last year — 56 percent to 44 percent.
Traffic was heavy outside the courthouse today, the third day of early voting.
The final vote on the levy will be held on primary election day — May 13.
The Morgan County Clerk says that as of 4:50 pm today, about 660 people have voted.
Sixty-seven absentee ballots have been sent out.
Those are the citizens who are actively engaged.
But there are people in Morgan County who just don’t vote. And never have.
A rough survey of citizens of Morgan County, West Virginia over the past couple of weeks found that small percentage of citizens — maybe five to ten percent — proudly claim that they don’t vote and never have voted.
Their reasons vary.
There is no point.
Politicians are all corrupt.
Even if they don’t go in corrupt, the system corrupts them.
And then there is — I voted for Jesus.
We met one such non-voter — Carol Painter — today at Berkeley Springs State Park.
Why doesn’t she vote?
“Because I started studying the Bible when I was twelve years old,” Painter said.
“And I became a Jehovah’s Witness. And we are waiting for God’s Kingdom to rule us. We will be ruled by Jesus. It will be a form of government unknown to mankind at the moment. But it will be just and it will be founded on justice, which governments aren’t founded on now. And even the best of people you send to your government get corrupted. They come back ten or twenty years later as somebody they weren’t when they first went.”
But can’t we do better than we are doing now by sending better people to elected office?
“You send better people to elected office back in the 1950s,” Painter says. “People were more religious back then. Because people now don’t read the Bible, they corrupt more easily.”
It doesn’t matter who is in office?
“It doesn’t matter who is in office because Jehovah God controls our earth and things will go exactly like he wants. He wants his Kingdom to rule mankind, not man’s rule over man, but God’s rule over man.”
You are sitting in your car here, and your car is sitting in a pool of water. When you get out, you have a choice to step in the water or step over the water onto the concrete curb. Are you saying that choice doesn’t matter?
“That choice does matter,” Painter says. “I”m going to step on the concrete.”
Why then wouldn’t a choice between a better and a worse candidate matter?
“Because ultimately, the end result is in God’s hands, not in man’s.”
“The concrete represents God’s Kingdom,” Painter says. “And the water represents man’s being swishy-swashy.”
A true Christian candidate, someone who believes in helping their fellow man would represent God’s candidate. The worse candidate would represent man’s being swishy-swashy, right?
“That’s true,” Painter says. “But the best candidate to help mankind is Jesus. He will be the King. People refer to him as the King of Kings or the Lord of Lords. And that will be the actual government that will rule mankind. And it won’t be unjust.”