Two weeks to go | Editorial, Oct. 20

A bad taste in my mouth

I voted today. That said, I did not come away with the warm, fuzzy, patriotic feeling that many of my friends have expressed the past several days. Instead, I was uneasy.

While I was simply dropping off my mail-in ballot, today was the first day of early balloting for those who chose to vote in person. There was a long line of people waiting to cast their ballots, and there were zero attempts being made to maintain a safe distance in line.

I was also disturbed by much of the rhetoric that I was hearing from one group in particular who had gathered barely outside the legal distance and were verbally advocating for their particular candidate. One lady was seen to engage with voters in what I would call an intimidating way if it became apparent that the voter did not support her candidate.

This left a bad taste in my mouth. Just because we can do something does not mean that we should, and I don’t think that anyone deserves to be harassed or intimidated as they are attempting to vote. In the end, we are all on the same team, but some folks sure make it hard to remember that.

Gary Enoch, Spring Hill

Two weeks to go | Editorial, Oct. 20

Don’t forget this detail

Great advice in your editorial about voting, but I kept looking for an important point. It is so easy to go to the Supervisor of Elections site to confirm that your vote has been received and counted. We dropped off our ballots last Thursday and confirmed three days later they were accepted.

In the 2000 presidential election of George W. Bush versus Al Gore, my wife received a letter a month after the election that her ballot had been rejected because it did not look like her signature. Lesson learned. Your piece this morning was the perfect vehicle to spread the word to voters to check to be sure their vote has been counted. If not, it can be timely cured.

Lawrence Fuentes, Lutz

Crazy good Rays doing it their way | Oct. 20

Why are we a small market?

Like John Romano indicated, I join Rays fans in being thrilled about this team. But I get tired of us being called a small market. The following major league cities have a smaller population: St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Milwaukee. So why do the above cities always outdraw us? Location, location, location.

Unless we build a new stadium in the middle of Tampa Bay, we are going to alienate one side of the bay or the other. Right now, we draw fans from Sarasota, for example, but not many from Orlando. I attend several games a year because Tropicana Field is about 15 minutes away from my house. I’m sure I would not attend as many were the stadium in Ybor City. But I would still listen on the radio and watch on television.

Chris Core, St. Pete Beach