VOTE (revisited)

I wrote this four years ago before the last Presidential Election.  I reread it today and decided I still feel the same way...probably even stronger now that my kids are getting old enough to kind of understand what's going on and who's doing what.  I'm hoping it stood the test of time!

VOTE

So did you all get the email that’s been passed around about Women’s Suffrage movement and what they went through to get to vote?  Or read up on what black Americans went through, including murder, when they tried to exercise their right to vote as late as 1965 (and probably later in some places)?  Frightening.  Truly.

I think what’s more frightening to me is that so many people, especially women, DON’T VOTE!!  I don’t get it.  I am apathetic about sooooo many things, but not voting.  From town council to the White House, I pine over who I’m going to try to help get in or sometimes, help NOT to get in.  I read and re-read my sample ballots and after I get my head to stop spinning after reading the constitutional amendments or the questions,  I read the “translation for idiots” at the bottom to make sure I know what they’re asking me!

My very first voting experience was the Presidential Election 1984 when Reagan was running for his second term against Mondale.  I was so excited I wanted my mom to take my picture going in and coming out of the booth.  She refused.  Killjoy!  S’okay, I remember like it was yesterday…truly one of my proudest moments. 

I don’t talk heavy politics with people.  I think it is an incredibly personal topic.   I have cocktail party political conversations with people.  You know, enough to let a person know which direction I lean without taking the chance of saying too much and offending someone who totally disagrees with my leaning.  (I kinda sound like a politician, don’t I?)  If someone does bring up politics in my house I welcome what they have to say as long as there’s no fist banging or extended soapbox standing and, most importantly, that they are voters.  My husband and I have a rule in our world; we’ll listen to your complaints (may even share a few) and counter or commiserate, whichever the case may be, as long as you VOTED!  Before we let you get too far, we stop you, ask if you’re a voter and if you say “no”, we don’t let you talk.  Isn’t that rude?  I mean really.  It’s my rule and I think it’s rude!  But there it is.  More people voted in the American Idol contest last year (myself included) than for the last Presidential election (like 80% more).  I totally understand though.  I mean, come on, I don’t have time to fill out less than 10 lines on a postage paid Voter Registration postcard that I can drop in any mailbox!  I do, however, have time to dial my phone 4,000 times until the busy signal at AI is replaced with a computer voice thanking me for my vote and disconnecting me.

Look, I don’t care who you vote for (well, not really, but hey, this is America, right?) just get out and VOTE!!  Do it for our kids’ futures.  Do it for OUR futures as senior citizens.  Do it to start changing things you want changed.  Just DO IT!!  Don’t think your vote doesn’t matter.  Don’t pull the electoral vote card out and say your one vote doesn’t matter.  It does it does it does.

That’s it.  I have to get down.  The air’s way too thin up here at the top of my soapbox!!

~Eileen Bishop (written 9/14/08 for October 2008 MOMS Club Newsletter and published in the November 2008 South Jersey MOM Magazine as a Letter to the Editor)