Are you the kind of person who thinks, “My one vote won’t make a difference”?
Not so fast.
This election, as we are told often enough, will be a close one. Remember Bush versus Gore? Remember hanging chads? Every vote mattered then, and it does now.
“I just don’t want to”?
Imagine for a moment you live in Peru, where voting is mandatory. The fines for failing to vote are significant. To ensure voters poll only once, your forefinger is dipped in ink that lasts at least 24 hours. Everyone carries a voting card, stamped by government officials.
This is not our flavor of voting. There are different ways to conduct liberal democracies, and none of them are perfect. But the Peruvian model exposes a distrust between the individual and government that feels, well, foreign.
Where we live, you matter, your actions matter, as do your inactions. We prefer to make common cause for the common good, a system that allows individual choices to be freely acted on, where each of us has the freedom to make the time and effort to vote.
This experiment in democracy is really a test of the mettle of each generation. Do we deserve this gift of a government design that stands firm but also changes like a living thing? Moving amoeba-like from right to left and back, shaped by every one of us, voting A, voting B, or not voting? It all matters.
Why vote? Because our system of governance is fragile, based on the most gentle of ideas, that it is possible to live in peace amid a bouquet of ideas, that truth and justice are real and matter, and the whole of our nation is derived from the behavior of its individuals.
Make a plan to get informed … and vote on Nov. 5.
Karen Muriello
Oak Park