Shorter version of Voting Is The Fundamental Act Of Free People
Voting Is The Fundamental Act Of Free People Dan Ezekiel
I am an environmental activist, and I recently asked several climate-change experts, (including Nobel laureate Henry Pollack), “What is the one most important thing we can do to help stem global warming?” To my surprise, all of them said “Vote.” with several adding, “and encourage others to vote.” Hence, this article…
I always vote, and I think you should always vote too.
I’m an old white guy, but I’m not writing this for other old white guys; they mostly vote already.
It’s a fact that older folks vote more than younger ones. I’m writing for younger folks, doing my best to understand why you might not care much about voting and trying to motivate you to feel as I do.
My First Vote
In the 1960’s, when I was in third or fourth grade, our teacher told us we were going to elect class officers: president, vice president, and so on. She described the (negligible) responsibilities of each office, I remember pondering the worthiness of the various volunteers. This one was smart, this one was friendly, this one was handsome and reserved, this one was pretty and lively.
Soon we were told to put our heads down on our desks, not to peek, and raise our hands for the candidates we favored for each office. The teacher jotted down tallies.
I doubt anyone’s life was greatly changed by the results, but the teacher instilled a mighty lesson, which I understood instinctively at the age of eight: You each get one vote, it doesn’t matter if you are big or small (I was very small), boy or girl, oldest, middle, youngest, or only child. It doesn’t matter if you live with one parent or two, if your parents are wealthy or struggling to get by, none of that matters, you each get one vote. That’s how we do things in this country…
In the 1980’s, my father ran for a local office twice (he won once, lost once). I worked hard for him and really wanted him to win. On Election Day itself, I phoned and then knocked doors of voters who hadn’t yet shown up at the polls. Had I done enough? Yet when the polls closed, I felt a sense of calm and peace: I had done what I could.
Perhaps one reason young folks vote less frequently is they haven’t yet had the experience of volunteering in a campaign or helping a friend or family member run for office. Once that happens, you start to see how politics actually works, and the political folks you meet always stress the crucial importance of getting people out to vote.
Voting Is Powerful
It might feel that voting is useless, because the system is rigged to preserve the privilege of white people, of men, of heterosexuals. The rich are favored; they can contribute lots of money and bend candidates to their will.
All of that is true, in politics as in every other aspect of life. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t vote; it means we need to vote, to educate ourselves about the ways elites use the political system to their benefit, so we can organize and fight for reforms.
Change doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens. Here are a few examples of the effectiveness of wielding voting power:
When I was born, in the 1950’s, the school districts in my home state of Virginia were legally segregated. Throughout the Deep South, Black Americans, even those who had served our nation honorably in wartime, could not vote. The idea of gay marriage, or folks being able to smoke marjuana legally, was preposterous. There were laws against interracial marriage, and there were many laws that discriminated against women. All those things have changed, due to everyday people banding together and using their political power.
Breaking the Gerrymander
In 2016, in my home state of Michigan, an everyday American named Katie Fahey, then 27, became fed up with the unfairness of the drastic gerrymanders the state legislature kept devising, ensuring that one party (the GOP) kept control in our purple state. Two days after the 2016 election, before going to work, she posted on Facebook: “I’d like to take on gerrymandering in Michigan. If you’re interested in doing this as well, please let me know.” She added a smiley emoji.
Her post took off. She soon gathered a group of volunteers who named themselves Voters Not Politicians (VNP) and circulated petitions to put a referendum on the ballot that would take redistricting away from the legislature and vest it in a citizen commission made up of everyday Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
Against all odds, VNP gathered the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to put their issue on the 2018 ballot. I signed the petition at a mobile farm stand in an agricultural region of MIchigan’s Thumb. Voters approved the measure 61-39%, and the commission was established. Lo and behold, its fair, competitive maps moved Michigan from the entrenched rule of one party to that of another party, which has since passed much progressive legislation.
Among other things, the new fairly-elected legislature has protected LGBTQ+ civil rights and reproductive freedom, rescinded anti-union “Right To Work” laws, passed gun-safety legislation, and adopted one of the most progressive renewable-energy plans of any state.
All these measures had been stalled for years in the previous legislature, and were moved forward primarily by a band of visionary, everyday citizens and the voters who heeded their optimism that American democracy can actually work.
By One Vote
Another reason people sometimes give for not voting is that it doesn’t matter, because their vote will not determine the outcome, since millions of votes are cast. Of course, in most cases, our individual vote isn’t determinative of the outcome, but there are exceptions, and we can’t know in advance whether any given election will be one of them.
I once voted in an election for mayor in my mid-sized town, in which the winning candidate–Albert Wheeler, the first and only Black mayor of Ann Arbor--won by exactly one vote. Every single voter who voted for him cast the decisive vote.
George W. Bush became president in 2000 because he garnered 537 more votes than Al Gore in Florida. (Well, at least according to five members of the Supreme Court, but I digress…)
Some people say it doesn’t matter if you vote. Nothing will change, the entire system is corrupt. Politicians are only out to enrich themselves with the public’s money. Everything they do fails.
In response, I’d ask “how many politicians do you personally know?” I’ve known quite a few, and many of them have been unselfish, curious, committed to doing the best they can for the public. My former U.S. Congresswoman, Lynn Rivers, lived for decades in a tiny rental house a few blocks from my house. She definitely wasn’t living high!
Do elected leaders make mistakes? Of course, but the best of them learn from their errors and become even better leaders. Are there corrupt, selfish politicians? Of course there are, just like there are corrupt, selfish people in every sphere of life.
Who Doesn’t Want You To Vote?
Much of the buzz you encounter on the internet, about the futility of voting and the rottenness of our elections and our politicians is actually the work of troll-farm employees in dictatorships like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, (and, of course, from the parents’-basement-inhabiting American dupes who think it makes them seem clever to repost them).
If we aren’t rich or connected, voting is the only voice we have in how we are governed. Voting is one of those things we take for granted by would miss dearly if we didn’t have it.
I have heard folks say they prefer other modes of advocating social change over voting, for example participating in direct actions, making art, doing grassroots organizing, or forming groups like cooperatives that challenge the way business is usually conducted. I say more power to them! But are these worthy and necessary initiatives really an either/or with voting? Protesting and voting go hand in hand as ways of making change.
Many Sacrificed So We Would All Have The Right To Vote
For most of human history, leaders weren’t elected. No one voted for Cleopatra or Hammurabi, or King Solomon. Even today, many people around the world are ruled by ruthless dictators who don’t even pretend to consult those they govern. Here in our country, many people sacrificed so we’d all have the right to vote:
Consider MLK, spit on, jailed, his house bombed, finally murdered when he was only 38, all for insisting we all have civil rights, including the most basic one, the right to vote. Think of John Lewis, beaten on a highway bridge until his skull was cracked, because he participated in an unarmed, peaceful march, insisting on his people’s right to vote.
Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper and daughter of sharecroppers, last of 20 children, with no education beyond 6th grade, was beaten and sexually assaulted in jail for trying to help Blacks in Mississippi register to vote, yet continued her activism for the rest of her life, despite lifelong injuries from the beating.
Consider the Suffragists, the activists who banded together to get the vote for women, which was finally achieved in the US in 1920. Alice Paul, jailed for 7 months in 1917 for picketing the
White House, went on a hunger strike and was force-fed by her jailers, a procedure that involves jamming a tube up a nostril and down the victim’s throat.
Consider, also, all the ordinary folks, like my dad (again), who was drafted and served his military hitch stateside, putting up with all the indignities and absurdities of military life, in the belief he was protecting democracy and voting.
If voting wasn’t important, would all these folks have sacrificed so much to try to get the vote and keep it? Every time I vote, I feel I am thanking and honoring them.
I hope you will join me.
Let’s Roll
A big election is coming up. Let’s learn about the candidates and issues. Let’s find out the procedure for registering and voting in our community. Let’s volunteer to work at the polls and help our fellow community members vote. Let’s educate our friends about the issues and the importance of voting.
But most importantly, let’s vote.