I’ve been noticing Maine veterans’ license plates more lately, not that there are more of the plates or that they don’t usually catch my eye. I guess I have just lingered a little longer than usual on the thought after I see them on the streets and in the parking lots around our towns these days.

Those plates mean someone shopping or working in that store or post office or wherever it is, served their country, served all us Americans and helped keep our gifts of freedom and voting how we want to, and maybe tried to help people someplace else get a little closer to that, too.

So far, Maine has been spared the reported, recent odd incidents in some other parts of the country, like phony collection boxes for absentee ballots, and having one box for a whole county. I’ve never heard of these things happening in the U.S., but 2020 has been full of surprises, most of them bad, like those examples and the arrests over an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor.

At press time, Maine, to my knowledge had seen nothing close to that shock level in its homestretch for local, state and national-level elections. And I can’t imagine we would. But could those other places where they are alleged to have occurred have imagined such incidents, either?

Show you cherish our electoral system. Thank a veteran for protecting it. And vote, if you haven’t yet.