Reasons you should vote in November
I live in Portland, OR now but once lived in Utah for 11 years. I spent 3 of those years playing in a rock band in Salt Lake City and used to hang around a bunch of 20-somethings, gathered to play music, smoke weed or do whatever it was that young people did on their free time. We were sitting around discussing the 2012 elections. I firmly believed in the importance of voting (it was Obama’s 2nd term election) but I recall a friend insisting that he wouldn’t vote because Utah was an overwhelmingly red state, that the gerrymandering they had instituted was unfair and bullshit, and that his vote wouldn’t count anyway.
I felt his pain. In 2010 Utah had a redistricting that essentially made no changes to the district lines that horribly gerrymandered the predominantly blue Salt Lake City. If the lines were drawn properly to represent the city and its residents, Salt Lake City would be blue. But of course, the Republican party in control of the State weren’t interested in fair politics that represent diverse opinions. They slipped the redistricting bill under the radar and continued to split Salt Lake City into “four outlying voting districts” in order to be the dominating voice.
I was at the Utah State Capitol in October 2010, protesting the measure but earlier that year, the citizen activist groups were only able to collect 50,000 signatures where 95,000 were required to get on the ballot. Was this a failure on the part of the citizen activist groups or the Democratic party? I think not. If we had more time I am convinced we could have gathered enough signatures for the measure though inherently, it was a failure on the part of every person who voted and elected officials who would practice unfair gerrymandering. Anyone who believes in democracy should not support gerrymandering that creates a false representation of a geographic area or a community. I digress.
I never stopped thinking about this friend who said he would not vote because his voice didn’t make a difference. I can think of so many but here are some reasons why I believe a person should vote, no matter what political climate they live in.
Voting is an institution of democracy.
Sure, you may feel that politicians don’t represent the voice of the people, but this is why it is more important than ever to vote for people that will represent your voice. If you you feel that your Senator, House Representative, State Governor, city Mayor, city councilmen, court justices, etc., do not represent your voice or have failed to come through with their promises, we have an opportunity every 2–4 years to vote them out and vote someone better in. We all need to participate in order for the institution of democracy to work properly.
We have terrible humans and politicians running our government right now.
Many men and women have stepped forward to challenge and replace these politicians who have failed to represent the voice of the people. If enough of us turned up to vote, we can get better people in office. Alabama, a traditionally Republican state, voted blue in the December 2017 elections. The majority of Americans actually want government healthcare, greater regulations for the 1%, regulation in the financial industry, money taken out of politics, gun control, tuition-free education, environmental protection, etc.
There is a history of voter suppression in America.
Before the Civil War, only white men were allowed to vote. Women weren’t allowed to vote until the 1920’s but the laws in the South to “test” people for “literacy, education or fluency in English” to qualify as a voter was not eradicated until the 1960’s. The Republican party and conservatives have practiced everything from intimidation, misinformation, gerrymandering, requiring ID’s like a driver’s license (which “the transient, the elderly, students, (and) the poor” are often unlikely to have), to closing down polling locations or limiting voting hours in counties predominantly occupied by minorities or low-income folks. In many states, convicted felons are never allowed to vote again, even if they paid their dues. The voter-suppression tactics have left out the voices of too many people in this country, and this is why we must all vote for people who will not continue to allow voter suppression to be practiced in this country.
We need constitutional amendments to get rid of the Electoral College and establish the right to vote, so that presidents are elected by popular vote.
Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and yet got elected president because of the Electoral College. 3 million people did not vote for Trump. Not, a few hundred, not a few thousand, we are talking millions. That speaks to how broken our system is, and we need to vote people in that will amend the broken parts of the constitution. To be clear,
the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly include a right to vote… In fact, only members of the House of Representatives were elected “by the people” according to the 1776 Constitution. Although the 17th Amendment enabled the direct election of U.S. senators, we still don’t directly elect our president; technically, that’s up to the Electoral College…. The original version of the Constitution and Bill of Rights left it entirely up to the states to determine who constituted “the people,” and therefore had a right to vote at all.
See: https://people.howstuffworks.com/voter-suppression1.htm
The Republicans have slashed taxes only to slash medicare, medicaid, inclusion of pre-existing conditions in Obamacare, education and other government programs set up as safety nets for the poor, the elderly, the disabled, unemployed, and people who have fallen on hard times.
The program cuts also disproportionately affect minorities. It is inherently selfish, un-empathetic, and un-American. We need to vote people in who have greater compassion for all, not just for rich white men.
The Republican leadership have been working to overturn Roe vs Wade.
The GOP also have been (and are) actively working to overturn Roe vs Wade which established a woman’s right to make decisions regarding both her body and her life. Roe vs Wade isn’t just about abortion. It has overarching implications for a woman’s right to privacy, and “constitutional protection to personal decisions relating, among other things, ‘to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing’ and intimacy.”
Roe did far more than establish the right to abortion; it solidified and expanded the constitutional “right to privacy,” which has also been described as the right to autonomy or to be let alone. This right to privacy is part of the right to liberty protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which state that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law.
right to autonomy or to be let alone
I think this is the keyword here. When it comes to decisions regarding marriage, procreation, family planning, etc., a woman should have the right to privacy, the right to make her own decisions that do not involve everyone that thinks they should be involved. This is how women are able to join the workforce, pursue careers if they’d like, or choose when they want to start a family and how many to support. This constitutional protection is imperative to social progress, to women achieving their full potential in our society, in whatever capacity they choose.
If you might still argue that your vote won’t make a difference in a badly gerrymandered state in Utah, I would argue this. Pay attention to your local politics. Know the people running for city council, mayor, governor. There are some really awesome progressive people that are trying to create change for the better, and they need your support. Participation is the key to making changes. Some of the greatest changes in history have come about because people participated, because they felt their voices mattered.
If you need help figuring out who to help out in this coming November election, see A list of campaigns to donate to.
If you need help voting, see Election Day Cheatsheet.
