It's not too early to vote - even if you live in a late-primary state

I mostly ignore all the political horse race stuff that starts 2 years before the presidential election. Partly because 2 years of this is f*cking exhausting, partly the front runner 2 years out is rarely the candidate anyway, but mostly because I live in a late-primary state so I have no say in picking who my party candidate is going to be anyway. I know I'm going to vote for whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be, so why get all emotionally invested in great candidates who wash out of the process early. Just depressing. I can't even influence things with my poll results because I never get polled (and probably never will since I stopped taking phone calls from unknown numbers).

But it turns out that there is a way to vote at this point (if you're a Democrat, anyway) by simply making a small contribution to any and all of your favorite candidates. It turns out that candidates who don't reach whatever the polling bar is to be eligible for the next debate can qualify by reaching some arbitrary number of campaign donors. Not total amount of money raised: number of discrete donors. I may have known that already, but if so I had forgotten. Cory Booker reminded America of that rule at the end of the debate (for obvious reasons) and good for him for doing so. I like Booker and want to keep him in the race. So I went to his website and contributed a small amount. It was easy. They let me check out with Paypal and did not insist on a phone number, and the email I use for politics is already choked with spam and unlikely to get noticeably worse.