Cast your vote to make Elgin No. 1

Reader's Digest needs to hear from Elgin

To cast your vote for Elgin, simply go to  http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/.BocaJump | Jan. 4, 2012

It’s a race for the green, but as of midnight, Elgin was in 37^th place. You can help to change that by casting your votes to push up the ranking of The City in the Suburbs and help to win a $50,000 cash prize the city hopes to use to complete the riverfront by the Veterans Memorial.

The national magazine Reader's Digest is holding its "We Hear You America" contest in which people go to the contest website at wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com, type in their town, register and then begin voting. It’s like the fabled old-time Chicago politics — you can vote as often as you want.

A number of Elgin residents already have taken to Facebook to encourage people to vote for this city, and BocaJump is joining the effort — which gets back to Elgin’s No. 37 ranking.

In the last census, Elgin’s population was about 108,000 — that is about 68 times larger than Lake City, Iowa, which, with only about 1,579 residents, had logged 1,407,437 votes as of 12:38 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4. That is the equivalent of every resident of that tiny town voting more than 890 times.

By contrast, Elgin’s tally at the same time was 40,033.

Elgin, we can do better, and if we do, we can make out riverfront look a little better in the process.

So please, go to wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com and vote. It’s simple enough — go to the website and type in “Elgin, IL” and hit enter, and a registration screen will pop up. Fill out the form — no purchase is necessary — and you are set to go. Got to the vote box and follow the directions — you can cast 15 votes or so in as little as five minutes. Bookmark the page and go back when you have a few idle minutes and vote some more.