Tuesday just can’t come fast enough.

For Tuesday is Presidential Election Day in the United States.

A day we’ll go behind closed doors and vote our preferences, then wait to learn who are the winners and who are the losers.

Regardless of your political affiliations, if you’re at all like me, you’ll be glad to see this whole mess end.

Far too long, we’ve been inundated with ads. With finger-pointing and name-calling.

“He said…”

“No, she said…”

“Well, he meant…”

And so it goes.

While some people have genuinely followed the whole process — listening in on candidates’ forums, watching debates, researching the issues — others made up their minds early and now turn a deaf ear to anything that might be contradictory.

In this country, that’s their right.

I hate to sound like a curmudgeon (and perhaps things have always gotten ugly in election years), but it seems to me that this one has been nastier than others from the past.

More rumors. More lies. More money frittered away when people are hurting.

And fewer places to turn for unbiased, factual reporting.

Most of you know I was trained as a journalist. “Fair” and “impartial” were our bywords long before FOX News adopted them and ran with them.

Sad to say, I wouldn’t fit in with the profession any more, so it’s a good thing I got out when I did.

Journalists used to be proud of being told, “You call ’em like you see ’em.”

Now it’s all about money. Ad revenues. Staying on the good side of those in power.

But I digress.

What’s important is that we still have the privilege of voting. Of being a small part of the electoral process. Of feeling like we matter.

For we do, you know.

Every vote counts. If you doubt that, ask the person who stayed home, only to learn his candidate lost by one vote.

So GO VOTE. Our forefathers fought and lost their lives that we might have that right. Surely they deserve not only our gratitude but also our exercising of the rights they sought to preserve.