It’s important.
And no, it’s not just a gesture, like genuflecting. It has real-world consequences. There are few things that make me angrier than people who treat voting like a game. We see them all the time interviewed on election day after coming out of the polls, smirking at the camera as they say, “I voted for Jill Stein/Ralph Nader/Mickey Mouse/Brexit. Wanted to send the durned POLLYTISHUNS a message.”
In the 20th century American south, black Americans were killed for even attempting to register as voters, and even after the Civil Rights Act, every effort was made to prevent them from casting a ballot. The voting machines in black neighborhoods had a way of breaking down, lines would go around the block, people who could not afford to miss a day’s pay would be faced with the choice of voting or working. When Harvey Gantt ran against Jesse Helms in 1990, black districts in North Carolina were flooded with leaflets worded to make it sound as if anyone who’d moved within the last year would be arrested if they tried to vote.
I know someone who went door-to-door the day before the election, trying to convince voters that it was untrue. She got kind smiles from older folks who said, yes, they knew it wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter whether it was legal or not. They could get arrested for it anyway.
In 2004, I traveled to New Orleans, got up before dawn, and poll-watched in a neighborhood where so many voters had been deliberately left off the rolls they had to send out for more provisional ballots.
Hell yes. I vote.
Pam Troy 