Did you participate?

On election day, near the grocery store, I saw that someone had taken a bunch of those campaign yard signs, six or seven signs with candidates’ names from both parties, and stuck them in a tree. A sort of hanging in effigy? Or perhaps just a way of saying this election campaign has been way too long?

I expected a line at our polling place, so I thought I might take a book to read while waiting in line. Then I noticed that the subtitle to my book includes the word “Bolshevism.” Too risky to take that book. It turns out there wasn’t a line. (The book is “The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism” by Anthony Read.)

Assume national voter participation is at around 80 percent (percent of registered voters who actually voted), and 185 million Americans are registered to vote. This would mean that about 37 million registered voters did not vote. Were they sick?

The Bolsheviks got 100 percent voter participation, I believe.