TODAY is the next-to-biggest enchilada – the last day of Early Voting.  Cast your ballot tomorrow or cast your fate to the winds next Tuesday. Sure, you can vote on Election Day – and more people still do it that day. If that’s your plan, be extra good at planning.

TODAY is the next-to-biggest enchilada – the last day of Early Voting.  Cast your ballot tomorrow or cast your fate to the winds next Tuesday. Sure, you can vote on Election Day – and more people still do it that day. If that’s your plan, be extra good at planning.

Take steps to make sure you are not kept from voting, despite your firm intention, because of:

Kid appointments, games, sudden requirements for pickup from school, you name it

Doctors’ appointments or health emergencies; a sick child

Bad weather

Car trouble

Extra chores at work, meaning later hours and no chance to get away to vote.

Working a long way from home, meaning you have to vote before or after work (see above)

Well, you get the idea – all the little things that can add up to a bad day of no time for getting to the polls. If you plan work-arounds for these pitfalls, you improve your chances of carrying out your plan to vote on Nov. 6.

Or you could vote TODAY, Thursday, Nov. 1, with the relaxed feeling that if something goes wrong on the last day of Early Voting, you still have Election Day as a backup. Election Day, there’s no backup.

You make the call. Early Voting is the gift that keeps on giving, even on the last day (Thursday, Nov. 1). Don’t refuse it.

And by the way, we have endorsed a number of candidates, including Ben Jealous and Susie Turnbull for Governor/Lt. Governor. And we have lots of information pointing to why your decision to vote for Ben and Susie and send the incumbent, Larry Hogan, back to private life will be good for you and most of the folks you know. Find out more about that here , as well as in Monday’s Memo; see >>The Ben Jealous File, and Linda Neuman's thoughtful roundup yesterday.