Election day in 1968 was Tuesday, November 5. At OCS, we were able to vote using absentee ballots. I chose not to vote.
It wasn’t the inconvenience or extra bother. It was the candidates. I didn’t want either one to be President.
That was back when I was a bit of a lefty. Not particularly radical, mind you. Just “progressive” back when that term had little meaning, I think.
As a Republican, Nixon was not going to get my vote. Humphrey, I saw as complicit in what I considered at the time as a misbegotten war in Vietnam. I wouldn’t have voted for President Lyndon Johnson either, if he had chosen to stay in the race.
The election was quite close in popular vote — Nixon winning by less than a percentage point over Humphrey and neither exceeding 44 percent. George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, also ran, representing the American Independent Party, and he received 13.5 percent of the national vote, winning five southern states.