I believe that inherent in the right to vote is the right not to vote. I believe our forefathers fought not just for our voice, but for the bigger issue of freedom at the root of that voice. A right, by definition, is optional. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t vote. But then again I think you should do lots of things…respect the environment, teach your kids manners, return your shopping cart back to the corral, get your teeth cleaned twice a year, to name a few. Of course, I’m being a bit flip; obviously I’m not comparing hard-won suffrage with a trip to the grocery store. I’m just saying that if you choose not to vote, I don’t think you are being un-American. I do think you are being stupid. Ok, not stupid, only because my kids might read this someday and call me out for using the “s-word” (see manners discussion above), but ungrateful, short-sighted, and apathetic perhaps. That’s only my opinion, which is very different from evoking broad statements such as calling voting a “civic responsibility,” as if you let down your entire community (nay, country!) when you don’t vote. Really, you let down yourself, which may be worse. (Actually, it’s not. I would rather let myself down than my entire country, to be honest. But I can fall into people-pleasing, which is why I’d never run for President. That, and the fear of aging a decade in four years in office.) I digress.
Yes, I vote. And I treasure being American and getting to vote. I cried when my husband became an American a few years, and we took our four daughters with us to the polls when he voted in his first election. I wear the “I voted!” sticker proudly. At Zumba this morning, we all got misty-eyed doing our cool-down to “God Bless the USA.” I vote, and I hope my girls grow up to appreciate the gift of living here, and the chance to declare where they stand on issues and candidates by pulling a lever (or filling in the bubble, as I did this morning.). But my love for voting, my sense of responsibility that tells me to find the time on a crazy busy Tuesday when I am behind on a book deadline (totally random example…ha!), is, to be clear, my preference; a choice; a priority. It’s the way I choose to respond to my right to vote. But, my preference is not your obligation, ever. Or else it’s not a right.
If you ask my advice (and I’ll take the fact that you read this far as a “yes”), voting is the right thing to do. So go do it, if you haven’t already and if your polls are still open. Just my two cents.