My neighbor stopped me the other day, lamenting “what’s gone wrong with my Republican Party?”

He told me the story of why he joined the GOP after he returned from the Vietnam War. He says now the two leading candidates (Trump and Cruz) are unworthy of the office of president.

He is disillusioned by the whole election process. He pointed out to me that he long taught his grandchildren the importance of voting as a civic duty, but he was thinking now of telling them not to bother with it. He said he “wanted to send the GOP a message.”

I pointed out that voting is a civic duty, and that if he could not bring himself to mail in his ballot for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (that would be a message), then he could always leave that line on his ballot blank and vote for other candidates and referenda.

(Yes, I was encouraging a Republican to vote, but I am a village trustee - city counclimember - and I don’t think it is helpful to discourage people in my overwhelmingly GOP town to not vote, particularly since they voted for me as a Democrat.)