Think your vote won’t matter? Think again.

I was heading to a Labor Day picnic at a park, so I bought a veggie platter from Costco to take with me.

After I got it home, I started wondering: Since I had purchased it in Mount Laurel, N.J., wouldn’t that make it a crudité platter like the one Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz talked about in his viral video inside a store he misnamed as “Wegners”?

It’s silly season. Practically anything is fair game as candidates vie for our attention and our votes; the jokes — and trolling — are nonstop. But there’s nothing funny about the midterm elections.

The eyes of the world will be on Pennsylvania come November, thanks to hotly contested races for both governor and the U.S. Senate that could help shift the balance in politics nationwide.

Some of us are nervously counting the days until Nov. 8. But then there are the folks who can’t be bothered. I dedicate this column to them — the disengaged political fence-sitters.

We need you to consider this: When Gov. Tom Wolf arrived in office nearly eight years ago, the state had a huge deficit and a measly $231,000 in its rainy day fund. He’ll leave Pennsylvania with a budget surplus of about $3.6 billion and a whopping $2.1 billion in the state’s rainy day fund, thanks largely to leftover pandemic federal stimulus money.

My message to undecided or lackadaisical voters is: We have to keep our eyes on that money.

Whoever is in charge next is going to inherit a lot of cash. That person could have a huge impact on us. Do we really want to leave it in the stewardship of Republican election denier and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who not only wants to restrict abortion rights but also require Pennsylvania voters to re-register before future elections? Those are just a few of his ideas that would set us back.

I get it, though. You’re busy. When Wolf signed the state budget on July 8, most of us were in vacation mode and enjoying summer, myself included. It didn’t really sink in for many of us just how monumental — and historic — this latest $45.2 billion spending plan was.

Lawmakers earmarked roughly $1 billion for education statewide. Of this, $200 million will be for Philly schools. (Granted, Philly could have used a whole lot more because of the long history of chronic underfunding, but that’s a column for another day.)

Legislators have also set aside $105 million for much-needed gun violence prevention efforts and public safety statewide — a huge amount. Add to that an additional $2.2 billion investment in housing, conservation, and child care.

The Keystone State is in a good place financially.

But big changes would be in store if Pennsylvania Republicans win big this fall.

“Mastriano has already made it clear that he would cut the education budget by 50%,” State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Phila.), who is Democratic chair on the Appropriations Committee, told me recently. “We’ve seen in the beginning of the [Gov. Tom] Corbett years what a $1 billion cut in education would mean. If you remember, 27,000 people lost their jobs in that cycle. We’re talking about teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and secretaries. Schools had to close.”

Mastriano wants to put the Corbett education cuts “on steroids,” Hughes added. ”We can’t have that.”

Having this extra money is a huge gift, Hughes said — one we shouldn’t squander. “We’ve got to win the elections so we can exert our political will. Think what it would be like if we could get all of our schools air-conditioned ... so that we wouldn’t have to shut down when the weather gets too hot.”

But that takes money — money that shouldn’t be left up to the whims of election deniers and those who pretend critical race theory is really being taught to K-12 public school students. It shouldn’t be in the hands of those who think teachers and school support staff should carry guns.

Sen. Hughes isn’t the only lawmaker who believes the state’s extra money is a transformative opportunity that hangs in the balance.

The pandemic “decimated” so many communities, State Rep. Morgan Cephas told me. “But luckily, we’ve had a Democratic president that believed in infusing dollars directly to states and municipalities. But the thing is you’ve got to spend ... and this is one of the reasons we’ve got to continue putting Democrats in office.”

Pennsylvania has been under too much Republican control, and too focused on investing in Wall Street and Main Street, she added. “But this time around with dollars that we have available, the feds are being intentional about investing in my street,” Cephas said. “When I say my street, that’s investing in people. ... We were really laser-focused on getting those dollars down to communities.”

It’s fun to giggle about whether cut-up produce arranged on a plate should be referred to as crudité (as Oz calls it) or a veggie platter (as his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, does). But come Nov. 8, the only green thing that will matter is money — and who gets to decide how it’s spent.