Your Gift

What does your vote truly represent?

I thought about this a lot yesterday as I dropped off my absentee ballot. Going forward, my ballot will lie in waiting at my local town hall until it is collected and group with nearly 14,000 others that will all be processed on Election Day. At that time, the outer two envelopes will be removed and my ballot will become completely indistinguishable from all the others processed that day. My name won't appear anywhere on my ballot. Nobody processing my ballot will know which one is mine. It simply becomes one with the election universe. 

Why then do we fight so hard so that our voice is heard? 

It is the answer to that very question that drives each and every one of us on a daily basis. For those in tune with American politics, we have seen the very real consequences of our votes over the last generation. In 2000, we saw the entire presidency decided by 537 votes in Florida. In 2016, we saw the entire election swing on fewer than 78,000 votes in the 3 key states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. In 2018, we saw a few thousand votes shift the state senate of Virginia, allowing the state to become the 37th and last state needed to potentially pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Voting has consequences. Voting matters. Voting is what decides what kind of country we are and what kind of country we want to be. 

But voting is also a culmination. It is a culmination of you and your family's personal story. At some point, unless you are Native America, your ancestors came here without the ability to cast a ballot. Perhaps he or she earned their citizenship. Perhaps not. Perhaps citizenship was not granted until their son or daughter was born on American soil. Perhaps not. If you were descended from slaves, even a victorious Union Army did not grant you the right to vote. With a century of de jure and de facto voting restrictions, it wasn't well into the 20th century that this population could fully enjoy civic participation and since then there has still been a targeted effort to disenfranchise this community. If you were a woman whose family came over on the Mayflower, you had to wait exactly 300 years before you were allowed to cast your vote alongside that of your husband.

I myself am a 4th-generation American. Growing up, my assimilation was clear as I had no established identity. I was a human mutt, made up of Scottish, Lithuania, and Italian heritage. Even more confounding was my religious heritage. I had a mixed marriage of Roman Catholicism and Episcopalianism on my Dad's side and a Roman Catholic grandmother and ex-Mormon grandfather on my Mom's side. It's the Mormon side that was the doozy. My great-grandfather was born in Mexico but soon thereafter moved to greater Los Angeles. His father had been part of the Mormom wagon train with Mitt Romney's grandfather and they were eventually deported to Mexico for practicing their "strange" religious ways. I don't know how exactly my great-grandfather ended up moving to California but I know that he and his American-born sons ended up starting a refrigeration business that would eventually open up sites in both the United States and Mexico. A foreign-born small business owner employing both Americans and Mexicans during the Great Depression. Imagine that. 

Despite this mixed heritage, my skin tone clearly put me in the Caucasian bucket. Because of that, I never faced barriers to vote. I was never questioned as to whether or not I was the person my ID said I was. I never had to wait in line for 5+ hours in an urban center. I had reliable internet and online resources to ensure that my immediate family had updated voter registration information, even during the pandemic when my Mom relocated to an assisted living complex. As I handed in my ballot yesterday along with my ID to the receptionist at my small-town clerk's office after walking right in with no line, I knew there wouldn't be an issue. There never is and there never will be for someone who looks like me. 

Yet as I handed in my ballot, I couldn't help but think of those that came before me. Of my family members, both living and deceased, who made sacrifices so that I could walk into my town hall and vote in a free and fair election. I've had teachers, deans, small business owners, insurance salesmen, and military members within my immediate family. Each of them sacrificed so that their own children could pursue their own dreams. My Dad earned a master's degree and his father had a doctoral degree, providing me with two positive role models as I received my master's degree in my mid-20's. As an only child, I had resources, many of them financial, to pursue my own path. From SAT prep classes to college application fees to being able to afford both college and graduate school without needing student loans, my path was cleared in large part because of the legwork my parents and grandparents had done before me. Voting, the simple act of voting, is the least I can do to repay their sacrifice. 

So, as we all vote in the coming 33 days, think about what that means. People have suffered and died to give us this right. Republicans are still actively trying to deny us this right. They know what your vote means. Your vote means autonomy. Your vote means self-determination. Your vote means power. It is a power that in great number can usher in a change to our entire political system. Your votes in Maine and Colorado and Arizona and Iowa and North Carolina can mean the difference as to whether or not a President Biden can pass critical legislation on immigration reform, climate change, criminal justice, women's health, education, and job creation. These votes, that may very well come down to hundreds of votes in key swing states, can once again make the difference. Know your story. Know your history. Know your family's sacrifice to get you where you are. 

And vote in a way in which you recognize just how precious the gift of voting truly is.