FriendBurst Blog

My Dad always used to tell me that as a citizen of the United States it was not my privilege but my duty to vote. He drilled that into me from the time I was eight years old and he took me with him to vote that year. I went just for the ride and maybe a soda or ice cream, but he took it as an opportunity for a civics lesson. From then on whenever it was an election year, my Dad would ask my opinion on the issues and the candidates running. Before I made it to high school, the conversations were never serious, because my opinions were based on their hair or whether they looked mean. After I hit high school, I sometimes got the feeling that my Dad thought he had created a monster.

We had some very loud discussions, my Dad and I, but it never meant anything to our relationship because it was just politics after all. It was just his voting opinion to my non-voting opinion. Did our conversations ever influence his choices in the voting booth? Possibly, but our conversations did influence me. On the afternoon of my 18th birthday I registered to vote. It was 1976 and I haven’t missed a general election yet. Knock on Formica.

I’m sure I have been spoiled when it comes to the process of voting in the Great State of Nevada. We have various locations for registration, ballot booklets that are sent to all registered voters at least a month before polls open, early voting at convenient locations, and electronic touch screen voting booths with paper ballot backup. The act of voting is almost the easiest thing to do in Nevada. Although it is more convenient in Nevada than ever, we still have citizens that don’t vote. I often wonder why that is.

I know that in other States laws are being enacted that will and/or do make it more difficult to register and vote, which actions in my opinion are lower than despicable. Even in those States, though, there are very few excuses in my view that are acceptable for not voting. We will jump through several inconvenient hoops, find remedies to whatever issues need resolving, and in some cases bend over backwards to obtain mundane and rather unimportant things by comparison in our lives. So why do we fail to perform whatever effort is necessary to register for the right and duty to cast our votes? Why do we give up so easily on one of the most important things we can do in a free society no matter what the obstacles may be?

Some will say they feel that their vote is not that important. That votes by others will cancel theirs out. That it will have no real effect on what happens or the ultimate outcome of a political race. In the Presidential elections, because of the Electoral College, that argument may have some merit. Not a lot, but some. At the local and State levels, however, those arguments can’t hold water. At those levels of the political field, every vote counts for something. At the local level some elections do come down to just one vote.

As with economics, good (or even sufficient) governing for the people, by the people, doesn’t necessarily trickle down from the top. It actually starts in your neighborhood, City, County, and State. Most Presidential candidates don’t just walk in off the street. They are usually the governors, senators, or legislators that have been elected by the people at the State level. Most governors, senators, and legislators started out as mayors or councilmen. The vote you cast (or not) today may not effect an immediate change or even one that you may see in your lifetime, but it could be setting the stage for political changes many years in the future.

Your vote is important and does make a difference. How many bad politicians, or even ones that most of us just completely disagree with, have been elected with a voter turnout of 60% or less? What may have happened had there been a turnout of 80%, 90%, or the historically unattainable 100%? Would our Country be in a completely different position today, had the other 40% of our citizens actually voted 20 or 30 years ago? What will our Country be like 30 years from now when 60% (give or take) of the population is making the governing choices for 100% of us today?

I don’t care if you’re a conservative or a liberal, if you lean left or right, or if you’re totally independent. If you’re eligible and not registered to vote, get off your butt, get to where you have to go, do what you have to do, and register to have your say. Take some of your unregistered friends with you and make it a party. Then come Election Day, have another party if you need to and go vote. Please. It is important. It does matter.