Americans are so lucky to be able to Vote By John Zogby
There are tens of millions of people worldwide who only can wish that they had a right to vote. Or at least that they could cast a vote that would drive out a dictator, a hopelessly corrupt who embezzles money for himself which is meant to be used to improve their own lives. In the United States, the right to vote is guaranteed and it is something that truly matters. There are refrains that we have heard over the years that have become cliches: among poor people, “what does it matter” I will still be poor the day after the election” or from the young who say that nothing really gets done. But not voting only enables those sentiments and does not push the elective officials to work any harder.
Elections have been very close in US history. John F. Kennedy won in 1960 by only 118,000 votes out of 65 million that were cast. George W. Bush’s margin in the state of Florida in 2000 was only 521 votes after multiple recounts. Those small numbers of votes made the difference between civil rights laws, a space program that landed a man on the moon, and the most comprehensive nuclear arms deal in history – vs. a whole lot less. Would the United States have entered a failed war in 2003 under president Al Gore? We will never know but those few votes really did have meaning.
Photo by wikipedia
When you vote, a President or Governor, Senator, councilman, or town supervisor may not see your face or know you by your first name, but they a clear message is sent to them: you care, you need, you have a voice, you matter. And that vote is your personal ticket to speak up with a moral imperative to push for good things and complain about the bad. If the state wants to build a highway that will eliminate your back yard, can you in good conscience pound the table at a public meeting when you didn’t bother to exercise a very basic right that was granted to you? I have had the opportunity to advise so many neighborhood organizations, parents of school children, nonunion workers, and just folks who were being ripped off by a terrible policy and were angry beyond words. I have always begun my first meetings with a simply basic question: “did you vote?”
The United States of America is the land of freedom, including the freedom to not engage. But just think about the next time you need to ask a question about a veteran’s benefit, a Social Security payment, a refusal for coverage under Medicare, a student loan, a polluting industry or a high voltage power line that can be dangerous to you or your family. And ask yourself one simple question: “did I exercise one of the most basic and easiest and most enabling rights that the Constitution has given me?” If you have you have been empowered.
There are people today in early voting states who are standing in line for up to 6 and 7 hours to be heard. You don’t have to do that here. You are lucky. Act lucky!
John Zogby (@TheJohnZogby) is the founder of the Zogby Poll and Zogby companies, including John Zogby Strategies, and author of We Are Many We Are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in the 21st Century America
