~a column by Colleen O’Brien
“Life is so complicated. And then we have to vote?”
This is a line I overheard from a junior high girl who lives next door to my daughter in Cincinnati. It made me burst out laughing. Life is complicated, young woman, but voting is kind of like going to the Post Office to mail a package and having to decide if you want it to go priority, overnight or ordinary parcel post.
I don’t know this neighbor girl. She wasn’t talking to me, but I could hear her on her front porch with friends. Maybe if you’re a teenager, voting seems like the last straw in a long list of learning that seems pointless — like geometry.
You will survive without geometry, believe me. You will also survive without voting. But not so well or so proudly.
We learned in Civics class the procedure of how to vote. The class in American government was not an elective; we had to take it. It was a primer on how to grow up as responsible citizens if in fact we hadn’t learned it at home.
We learned about our government and its balancing act of the three branches and what their duties are; how Congress works (this verb, works, I did not write as a joke, but in this current era it is a joke, although not a new one; there was also a “do nothing” Congress in 1948, when Truman was running for President); we were taught how the new country’s government was made, including a bit on verbal fights among Jefferson, Washington, Adams and the rest of the first politicians of this country as they disagreed on the rule book for our future. There is a great deal out there regarding the history of the arguments and pettiness those benighted founding fathers engaged in — all the compromising they were forced to do to get the Constitution on the table.
We think politics is bad now, but, really, it’s always been contentious. It’s the way of a democracy – messy, time-consuming, often boring, always subject to influence from one group or another. The best part of a democracy is the voting – by us.
There have been times of crookedness at the polls, mostly having to do with one party trying to disallow people of the other party to vote. Chicago was once famous for its dead people voting, which doesn’t happen anymore, no matter what Trump “peats and repeats.”
Today political parties in different states make petty rules to keep certain members of the other party from voting. They ask for I.D., or a photo of oneself, they move polling places because of redistricting. But as for a “rigged” election across the country? Way too difficult to pull off today, Don, so you can quit positioning yourself as a looser as you’ve done lately.
After the election when you plan to retaliate against nefarious plots made up of the media, women for Hillary, Bernie diehards, Democrats in general and the Republican leadership – this comes to more than half the country rigging the electoral process so you don’t win – think twice. Americans, for all our faults, pity and look down on poor losers. So when you start whining “poor, poor pitiful me,” don’t expect our sympathy. There is no plot. Take it like a man.
In Civics, we learned the preamble to the Constitution and were supposed to read the entire contract itself. Mainly we studied the Bill of Rights, which is what is most often referred to in politics because the 10 articles have to do with owning guns, a press free of governmental interference, separation of church and state and freedom of religion, and our right to assemble in protest — things that we are concerned about personally.
I assume that high schools continue to teach civics. All kids need to learn how to be good citizens if this republic is to endure. We need to know how to learn about the issues (this might mean being more discerning about our TV watching, at least of the “debates,” where discussion of issues keeps getting interrupted); we need to learn the candidates’ opinions and plans, questioning them when they change the subject. We then actually can vote knowing what we’re doing, contributing in our own little way to our own future and to participation in the future of the country. Along the way one hopes that citizens accumulate at least a passing acquaintance with the Constitution and perhaps how to act in ways that promote the common good.
Voter turnout since the year 2000 has been 50 percent or just over (to 54, 55, 57 percent). That’s not good enough. We fought a war so we could run our own country, and we lived through several political battles to include more people: those who don’t own property, plus women, blacks, Native Americans.
Another reason to vote is that a representative government survives only when the common citizens elect the people who are going to run the country. We are the ones who have to tell our reps what to do. If the elected senators and congressmen won’t do it, we don’t vote for them next time. At least that’s the best scenario.
Other reasons to vote include the fact that who we elect makes a difference, from the local to the federal. Presidents and Congress take us to war and keep us out of war; they approve or disapprove members of the Supreme Court . . . or they’re supposed to; they make our laws and approve or veto them. What they do makes a difference in our daily lives, and if we have the power to help ourselves, why would we not seize that power and vote?
Voting is a big deal, one of the biggest privileges of our adulthood. There are countries where the people put their lives on the line to vote There are countries where people walk miles and miles to get to a polling booth. There are countries where the despot tells you who to vote for or else. There are countries in which you’ll never get to vote.
This year I figure my vote is vital.
I am a female, and I want someone in office who will respect me, treat me as well as anyone who is male or rich, well-known or unknown, young or old, pretty or ugly, curvaceous or “piggy.” All who show up to vote should be seriously respected, not seriously suspect because they’re the wrong color, speak with an accent, are dirty or dressed in work clothes or unusual headscarves. This is America, where however dim we can be, however mean to or afraid of strangers we are, we at least know that our nation has moved along the cultural evolution toward civil rights and equality. And all our people, including if we are Sioux or Apache or Iroquois, came from someplace else.
All of us are out of Africa we now know, so we are family. This fact doesn’t mean we’re necessarily going to get along without arguing, families being what they are, but thinking about the fact that we’re all cousins has got to be more unifying than thinking we’re all strangers.
Oh, and one thing, once you get into politics and voting you’ll probably learn before you’re 70 the difference between Uncle Sam and Uncle Tom, which seems to have come up as a problem for Donald, candidate for President.
