Vote: because you can and you can because people fought for it

By BECKY NELSON
Bramblings
Vote. If you can find any way to get to your local polling place, do so on Tuesday. The right to vote is one that many in the world do not have. Our forefathers had the foresight to allow their fellow men the right to voice their opinion and choose candidates to represent them according to their beliefs and passions and those coming after them amended these rights to include blacks and then women.

I am not saying the process is perfect. I am not saying the process is the best that it will ever be. I am saying that it is an amazing process and we should all exercise this right. Scrutinize the candidate statements, find the one in every race that best reflects your own viewpoints and fill in that box beside his or her name on the ballot.

I just heard that a record number of women are running for office this year. It has been 98 years since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and women could actually head to the polls, but all of those years were not easy. Nor were the 50 years or so before that when passionate suffragettes spoke, wrote and lobbied for change with what was seen by many as a radical change to the Constitution.

Having or being granted a right and being able to exercise that right are very different things. Culture had to change and women had to feel safe and respected in their decisions in order to keep their place in society at the same time as having the bravery to go to the polls. Over time, culture did change to some extent, though women are still struggling in the workplace, in cultural circles, in academic circles and other integral threads in the fabric of America to enjoy equality and freedom of expression. But one place women can truly feel empowered and free to make their choices is in the voting booth.

I have always been an active voter and a political thinker. I have had no desire to serve in public office other than a local board or two, but I have the utmost respect for those that serve in office and are willing to hammer out compromises, listen to their constituents and work for the people they represent. 

Politics is a messy business. Mudslinging and fiery words are nothing new, with candidates denigrating and disparaging each other in American politics as far back as politics have existed in the country. Reading a Chicago Tribune article about the long American history of political candidates calling each other names and exaggerating perceived flaws dates back more than 200 years. The article noted that the race in 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams sparked such vehement rhetoric that a Connecticut newspaper even published a statement that “warned that the election of Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.” Not to be outdone, James Callender, “an influential journalist of the time — wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a ‘repulsive pedant’ and ‘gross hypocrite’ who ‘behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.’”

This all sounds a lot like the rhetoric mud-slung about in the last presidential election and I suspect will continue to be slung about in elections to come. It is our job to ignore the ridiculous name-calling and politically charged rhetoric and find the folks who will work to achieve or maintain what we personally want achieve or maintained in our home towns, our counties, our states and our nation. Words have little lasting effect. What we need to do is find the people who will vote with their voices when in office that re-elect what we believe so those beliefs will have a lasting effect. There will be winners and there will be losers. It is our job to make our voices heard, however, so those voices are not lost in the race and in the day to day work in the halls of the select board or the Congress.

My vote counts. Your vote counts. Whether you are male, female, black, white, brown or any other color, gender, political affiliation or denomination of any sort, all of my fellow Americans have the right to vote. Ignore the rhetoric and the political vehemence and please get out to vote. The men and women before us worked very hard to give us this right and it is a right that should not be wasted.

 

Becky can be reached at [email protected].