My Two Cents--Did You Exercise Your Voting Muscle?

Whether or not you are pleased with the results of the 2004 election, the season of high intensity politicking has mercifully come and gone . . . for now.

This election day, tens of millions of Americans exercised their voting muscle--more than 120 million by some estimates, or 60-percent of eligible voters--and that's encouraging.

Kudos to you if you can count yourself a member of this group!

Still other tens of millions of Americans did not vote--many of them between the ages of 18 and 30, the same people who one day will become the future leaders for our country--and that's most disappointing.

It's clear that many Americans take their right to vote for granted, or simply don't care. They have become complacent, reciting the all-too-familiar, "My one vote won't make a difference." But tell that to Al Gore who, had 537 voters in Florida not turned out and voted for George W. Bush in 2000, would most likely have been this year's incumbent.

Luckily, not all of the sons and daughters of previous American generations took the right to vote for granted. Many fought and some even died to secure our ability to hold "free" elections. Starting in Revolutionary times, through the Civil War and the scandals and corruption of the mid- to late-19th century, through World Wars, and into present day, Americans have waged an ongoing battle to ensure that our system of voting and elections endures. They fought so women could vote; they fought so that all Americans, regardless of race, gender, or political leaning could vote. They won . . . and we and the entire world are their beneficiaries.

When we take time out of our otherwise busy lives to stop by our local polling places, we not only exercise our right--our duty--to vote, we also honor the sacrifices of these past generations.

I just don't buy the refrain, "I'm too busy to vote." No one is too busy to vote--not with absentee ballots and the relative speed and efficiency of modern voting. It took my wife and me all of 25 minutes to vote: 10 minutes to the polling place, five minutes to vote, and 10 minutes back. That's not too much of a time commitment, not too much to ask to ensure that our system thrives and our way of life continues.

The desire to vote, however, is not a wholly American trait--it's a universal desire. For example, in Iraq, Afghanistan and other such troubled spots, many of their sons and daughters (along with some of our own) are right now fighting and dying for the ability to elect leaders and to control the destiny of their respective countries. It's the ultimate expression of free will on a national scale.

On one level voting seems such a tiny "thing," a relatively small and insignificant event--the stroke of a pen, the touch of a stylus to a computer screen, the punching of a chad--but when combined with hundreds, thousands, and millions of other such singular acts, voting can be much more powerful than the spray of bullets.

By voting we can literally change the course of history, and virtually everyone--young or old, sick or healthy--can take up "arms" and vote. Only the desperate, disillusioned and disenfranchised resort to violence and intimidation. It's a simple fact--there are many more of us "voters" around than there are those who use fear and guns to gain or maintain power.

So here's hoping you got your "exercise" on election day by exercising your right to vote--a simple act that honors the hard work of those who came before us, as well as hard work yet to come. Remember, the world we create today is the world our children and their children will inherit. Voting is one way for us to rest easy that our voices have been heard and will continue to be heard.

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Copyright (c) 2004 by Matt McGovern--All rights reserved.