We’re getting close to Election Day.

The campaign hype grows and expenditures become massive. Elon Musk is giving away a million dollars a day every day until Nov. 5. My phone and email accounts are bombarded with dire messages of party and country collapse if I don’t pony up $5 or $25 for this candidate or that. I’m a registered Democrat, so my messages run that way. I’m sure that my Republican neighbors who have cellphone and email accounts see similar messages with different names on their screens.

And in all this hubbub we are told that it will come down to a few thousand votes in seven states. It seems a weird way for a democracy to determine its leaders. Especially when we can expect fully one-third of eligible voters to not vote! In the last presidential election, in 2020, of some 240 million eligible voters, 72 million did not vote. In the 2022 mid-term, only half of those eligible cast ballots.

So, we worry about 10,000 voters in Michigan and Georgia, with Harris, Trump, their allies and ad campaigns blanketing these states in the last days before E-Day. And 70 million people in this big citizen-ruled country sit it out! Who are they?

• Some folks live on the wrong side of the town or state where the state rulemakers make it harder for them to register and vote. Remember the Native Americans in South Dakota who did not have street addresses? And the long lines in Georgia and Wisconsin in 2020? And think about “redistricting,” where rulemakers, usually state legislatures, carve up county boundaries to fashion things to their likings, jumbling all on one side or the other into “safe” districts, making sure the “other” side gets stuffed into safe districts and their side ends up with the most seats in state and national elections. I can understand the discouragement for these people.

• Some folks just don’t like politics. They don’t vote for their mayors or councilors or church deacons. “Just leave me alone and let me work, fish, watch ballgames, movies, and my kids at the fair.”

• There are people who hate controversy, and might vote in the church or hometown, but in this charged election year, will sit it out. “A pox on both houses.” A friend says he does not look forward to the post-election crowing and bitching from both sides. He, and many others I’m sure, don’t like the testing of friendships, marriages, and generations that the current election has brought. He’ll not cast a ballot himself and hide from partisan voting friends when it’s over.

• The “don’t like politics” surely includes some who have street addresses on houses on the right side of town, who have their motorhomes, boats, bikes, and plush bank accounts. I imagine some of them, as I watch the parade of fancy rigs, boats, and RVs pass on Joseph’s Main Street in summer months, and think that life is so good for some that it really doesn’t matter who is running the country — as long as people keep needing the products they make or sell, or the stock market keeps its decades-long upward arc.

The stock market, by the way, seems to make its own course. It keeps going up — until it doesn’t! And in this election season, it reacts to hurricanes and interest rate changes, but pays little attention to the presidential race. As electoral tensions and angst rise, and the polls show Harris or Trump 1 percentage point ahead or behind, the market coolly gained almost 300 points on Monday and lost half of that on Tuesday. The wealthy move wealth from stocks to bonds to real estate, from Euros to yens to dollars, and though the market may fluctuate, they seem secure in their investments and lives. Some like Trump’s tax policies; others like Harris’s concerns with the environment; and some think it makes little difference to them personally, insulated and insured by wealth that is spread in many places. Why vote?

Sum total is that for all the strident campaigning and the money spent, huge numbers of Americans choose not to vote.

Me? I like my mail-in ballots, and appreciate efforts to induce more voters to participate in that and other ways, But I’m nostalgic for Voting Tuesday in November, casting my ballot behind a screen at the courthouse or schoolhouse, and wearing a sticker that says “I voted.” This year I am sorry for the many who won’t vote, and sorry for those who will vote quietly and not admit to it for fear of offending family members or neighbors.

It’s hard to know what we can do to make voting honorable again. But doing it — quietly or loudly, by mail or in person, and thanking the neighbors who work in polling stations and count the ballots, are certainly the first steps in reclaiming a tradition of good citizenship that is going through some very dark days.