The Flaming Torch - My Vote and Yours

Today I will be driving from my home in Patterson to Modesto. I will be carrying my absentee ballot, which I have completed, but did not have time to mail. My destination will be the country voter registration office, where I can hand my sealed ballot to an election official. Why am I doing that? To make sure my vote gets counted.

Why do I vote? Because there are people who don't want me to.

I am not going to name parties or names, but in the past and today, people and organizations have discouraged and prevented Americans from voting. Historically, neither political party has been exempt from these practices; ask any Civil Rights veteran of the 1960's.

A basic tactic of the power-hungry is to convince citizens not to participate in elections. If the majority in a country are economically beaten down, frightenened, discouraged and lied to enough, they cease to hope and they cease to vote.

An apathetic, powerless constituency will not challenge even the most insane of government actions. A democratic republic can degenerate into an oligarchy, where few rule and many suffer. Those who rule know this well. They depend on it. They do everything they can to alienate and discourage the electorate, enlisting cynics in the opposition who joining them in crying that voting is rigged, useless, and the only answer to social injustice is violence.

Does voting make a difference? Yes, voting makes a difference. Why else would those in power try to suppress it?

Denying people the right to vote is not just a tactic used in the 1960's South. This cruel and ugly beast reared its head in the last elections and is threatening this one.

It has struck In Ohio, where 200,000 new voters were nearly stricken from the rolls. In New Mexico, where private detectives hired by politicos intimidated poor and Hispanic voters (in their homes!) by asking them questions that intimated that they had no right to vote. In California, where phony petitions misled people into registering for the wrong party. In Florida (again!) where absentee ballots were thrown in the trash. In Virginia, where voters were given flyers telling them to vote on the wrong day.

And I am sure that before this election ends, there will be more. Much more.

That is why I am hand-carrying my absentee ballot to the Elections Office. I want it to be counted. Not lost in the mail, sent astray or thrown in the trash, but counted.

Not to vote, for whatever reason, is to say yes to those who would pillage our government and economy. Not to vote is to deny hope for change. Not to vote is to give in and say that representative democracy doesn't work and this great human experiment has failed.

To vote is to lift a flaming torch in defiance of those who would deny liberty, equality, justice, and hope.

Lift your flaming torch and VOTE.


P.S - Back from Modesto, mission accomplished, wearing an "I Voted" official sticker on my shirt pocket.

CB



KidLit Bloggers Blog The Vote: http://www.chasingray.com/archives/2008/11/blog_the_vote_2008.html