Get out there and vote

By next week at this time, we will know who will occupy the White House for the next four years.

No matter which candidate we back, it’s imperative to get out there and vote.

Honestly, it galls me when people say, “Oh, I’m not voting. I can’t stand either of the candidates,” or “One vote isn’t going to make any difference.”

Well guess what? Even if a person dislikes both candidates, isn’t some kind of choice better than none?  I mean, haven’t you heard the expression “the lesser of two evils?”

As for one vote not counting, that’s hogwash. Every vote counts. Every vote is important. Elections have been won on the basis of a very few votes, strategically important votes.

Apathy when it comes to voting is really infuriating. What many­­ people in our country fail to realize is what a tremendous privilege it is to be able to vote. There are many places still, throughout the world, where people yearn to vote but are not allowed to.

Throughout my childhood, my late father never missed a single election. My mother voted, too, but not as faithfully.

Daddy always chose the Democratic candidate, no matter who was running.  He was a staunch supporter of the party, that’s for sure. He said the Democrats were the party of the working man, and that’s what he was.

He always had difficult blue collar jobs he disliked, but that didn’t matter. He had a family to support, and he’d do whatever it took to make a living to pay the bills, put a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs.

If I close my eyes, I can see my parents still – hard working, simple people who sacrificed everything for their kids. No matter how tired he was or how oil-stained his hands were from a day’s work, Daddy made it to the polls.

As soon as I was eligible, I registered to vote and have been voting ever since.

The biggest incentive to never, ever miss an election came during a time when living outside of this country in two third-world countries, where guns and military might speak louder than freedom.

In one Central American country, we lived under a cruel and wicked dictator who put very little importance on human lives. He was known to have killed or ordered the killing of a lot of people. No one spoke freely in public for fear of getting shot.

To this day, I can conjure the image of an armed guard beating a poor drunkard to pulp in the street near the house where we lived. All I could do for the drunkard was pray. To speak out would probably have gotten me killed.

It was my first and only time of living without freedoms previously taken totally for granted.

When we returned to this country, I swore to never leave this soil ever again. Except to travel a little, that promise was kept.

Despite all the things not right in the United States, from drug abuse to racial injustices and greed, it’s still the greatest country on earth in which to live, as far as I’m concerned.

Next Tuesday, when the polls open, I hope everyone who can will get out there and vote. Exercise this immense privilege, and insure the road this country will take during the next four years.

If you don’t vote and things go south quickly, you will have only yourself to blame.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on November 1, 2012. Filed under Columns,From the Heart,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry