I don’t live in a swing state. For most of my 76 years, I’ve resided in a state which is uncomfortably a single party entity. I grew up in a modest home where President John F. Kennedy and a haloed Jesus stared at each other from framed photographs on opposite walls of our living room.
However, about 15 years ago the old maxim, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” had nudged me to abandon my political party status and register as unaffiliated. I had seen too many governors, mayors and speakers of the house in my state indicted for corruption. I needed some flexibility in my candidate choices.
There is really only one competitive race in my state this year, for a seat in the US House of Representatives, representing a district I do not live in. Should I bother to vote?
Prior to the 13th Amendment in 1865, Blacks in America had no voting rights. Part of their subjugation before Reconstruction after the Civil War included total exclusion from the ballot box. The 14th Amendment in 1868 and the 15th Amendment in 1870 theoretically made their voting participation easier, however local Jim Crow laws in the South stunted this progress.
In the early 1960s, well within my lifetime, Black rights were still resisted, often with bloodshed. In June of 1964, three civil rights advocates; James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were murdered by the KKK in Mississippi. On March 7, 1965, future Congressman John Lewis and others were brutally beaten trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, during a protest walk against racial injustice.
Gender bias also riddles America’s voting history. Even the 14th Amendment of 1868, which gave Blacks some semblance of equality, expressly gave voting rights to “male inhabitants” only. There were seven long decades between the first women’s rights convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, N.Y., spearheaded by iconic activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the passing of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Many heroes such as Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Frederick Douglass devoted their lives to the cause of voting rights.
Videos taken on January 6, 2021, show Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges being violently attacked by rioters while wedged between doors of the US Capitol building. Hodges later testified, “I definitely considered that might be it. I might not be able to make it out of here.”
While Hodges struggled for his life, quick thinking Senate aides were carrying the traditional mahogany boxes filled with the electoral ballot certificates out of the US Senate chamber for their safekeeping.
So, should I bother to vote?
From October 1968 to October 1970, I was in the Army, stationed in Alaska. I was told we were there in case a war with Russia broke out. It was felt that the first Russian ground troops to invade America would cross the Bering Strait to enter Alaska. We were protecting democracy.
Considering all these historical – and personal – sacrifices, should I bother to vote?
On the morning of November 9th this year, as I lather my face to shave, will the man I see reflected in the mirror have honored those who struggled to obtain the right to vote?
We must make the effort to vote.
Jim Raftus is a retired marketing executive and a US Army veteran. He lives in Cumberland, R.I.