This Tuesday is study card day. It is also primary election day in Massachusetts. I am writing to urge members of the Harvard community to vote on Tuesday, even amid the craze of the new academic year. Information about the candidates is easily accessible online, and voting is one of those democratic practices that we simply must not neglect.

I would also like to draw readers’ attention to an important gubernatorial candidate who deserves a close look: Dr. Donald M. Berwick ’68. I am not affiliated with Berwick’s campaign and I am not much of a political activist myself. But I have been deeply impressed by what the Boston Globe called Dr. Berwick's “principled contrast to politics as usual.” A pediatrician and medical executive who led Medicare for a year under President Obama, Berwick is a candidate with bold ideas and the experience and independence to bring them to fruition.

Dr. Berwick has proposed a single-payer health care system for Massachusetts—a desperately needed reform that would eliminate waste and improve access to quality care for everyone, regardless of ability to pay.

He is also the only candidate to oppose the state’s tragic embrace of casino gambling. (Berwick supports repealing the casino law by ballot question this November.) As he rightly emphasizes, casinos that prey on the poor are not only unethical in principle: They are also disastrous in practice. Gambling cannot sustainably raise public revenue or create the kind of job growth that we need.

Finally, Berwick has made the fight against poverty and economic injustice the center of his campaign, while his opponents have been almost silent about this most fundamental of issues. His stances on health care and casinos are just two parts of a serious and ambitious plan to root out the scandalous, unnecessary poverty that so many Massachusetts residents are suffering.

Berwick is one Harvard alumnus who deserves a very close look—and ultimately our votes. He has the experience, independence, and vision that are so urgently needed to tackle the problems that matter most. Please consider supporting Dr. Berwick today.

The election's outcome is in our hands, and the moral stakes are high.

Jonathan Bruno is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government