Oh, boy, you folks sure know how to vote. With about six days of voting remaining, more than 600 ballots already have been cast in the Suffolk News-Herald’s 2016 Priceless Pets Photo Pageant.

OK, so this isn’t leader-of-the-free-world stuff — and we see that as a positive (paws-itive?) thing. Everybody’s already overly stressed about Bernie and The Donald and Hill and Ted.

For many of us, the deal we’d most like to see made would be the one that miraculously caused everyone involved to be quiet for a long weekend — maybe that would give us time to reconnect to real art. Some of us have actually grown tired of feeling the burn, and we’re hoping there’s some kind of salve or ointment we can find to help make things better.

If you’re one of those who’s been hoping for a long period of global cooling when it comes to the political climate, you can take a bit of comfort from the fact that there’s nothing political at all about the Priceless Pets contest. It’s all furry and fluffy and sloppy pet kisses, and anything that looks like a toupee is just a gerbil.

Furthermore, fellow Americans, we can absolutely promise that nobody — neither candidate nor contest administrator — is getting big donations from oil companies or investment bankers. Not a single kibble has changed hands (or paws) to influence the outcome of this election. That’s a claim you’ll never hear in regards to any other American ballot — not even the dogcatcher can get elected in this country without some big-time financing.

When the Priceless Pets voting closes — at midnight on April 19 — you can be sure of this: Absolutely nothing will change noticeably in Suffolk, and our nation will have just as many problems as it has today. None of these wonderfully adorable pets will do one thing to help you get a job or pay your student loans or keep that immigrant family of geese from Canada from pooping in your backyard.

But you can be sure of this: When you click on the Priceless Pets logo on the Suffolk News-Herald’s home page, you will be making some pet’s human very happy, and they’ll almost certainly add a belly-scratch or two to their pet’s daily quota, which will make some dog or cat or gerbil (we do not discriminate here) a very happy pet mammal (well, we discriminate against reptiles, but doesn’t everyone?).

And happy pet mammals make the world go ‘round.