Why Your Vote Matters More Than You Realize

 

Well in my part of the country it’s getting to be that time again. Voting day is coming. Now I tend to vote in every election unless I am very sick. I never could understand why people whine so much about it either.  After all, your vote matters more than you realize.

Have you heard my vote doesn’t count that much so why should I vote?  Those people  are absolutely correct.   They may complain, but since they don’t vote how can that vote count for anything! Ok I get their frustration given what you see on TV and let’s not even go into what’s on the radio anymore. It’s like there are organized groups spewing information in the form of expert opinions trying to do you a favor by doing the thinking for you.

Really do you need that? Come on all of us know what’s right or wrong and we should be able to look at the actual facts and not what some columnist or talking head on an opinion show says and make a decision. And that’s what’s most troubling nowadays. In a lot of cases people don’t want to make a decision. They want to “abstain” and let someone else decide for them. In their mind they are “protesting” when let’s face the real truth about it. Those people that don’t bother more likely just have something better to do.

Remember there are places in the world where voting is a dicey affair. People sticking their fingers in colored dye to show they voted are in danger in some places. In spite of that, those people do it out of a sense of making their country a better place.

Clearly, right here it’s getting harder and harder to vote. Voters not exercising their voting rights face a good chance of being purged from voter rolls. In some states, this is becoming a more common practice. Maybe they think you are dead or moved away or maybe it’s something more ominous and I am not going there. However, our democracy is precious that should not be taken for granted.

Voting is our right. It is not a privilege just granted to a ruling class, but what our country is about.

Just think about immigrants. When they come here and become a citizen they vote. They want to and feel obligated to vote. And they are correct. It’s a civic duty that too many of us shirk!

But if you open your eyes and pay attention we have lots of younger people serving in some scary places in uniform coming back after seeing horrible things. Some are wounded in physical and other ways while still others do not return home at all. We owe it to them to exercise our voting rights. Who you vote for doesn’t matter. You may be diametrically opposed to what I believe in but I still think you and I both should vote from primaries to normal elections.

If you need inspiration on why your vote matters more than you realize, Franklin Delano Roosevelt summed it up beautifully.

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
32nd President of the United States

If you ever hope to see real change in our country, then take responsibility and get out there and vote when it’s your voting day if it’s happening in your part of the country because your vote matters.  Don’t let your voice be silenced.  Voting is like a muscle that you need to use or you lose it.  It is up to each of us to do our part and only then can we make sure our voices are united and heard. Otherwise, we face an uncertain future by allowing the further decline of our democracy.