I can’t stop thinking about the right to vote.
Maybe it’s because Election Day is fast approaching and presidential candidate Barack Obama has local roots. And hey, Obama’s hapa to boot. (Us hapas gotta stick together, you know.)
Maybe I’m thinking about the right to vote because I decided to take a post-bar exam trip to East Coast cities that have deep connections to American history. It helps that Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. are foodie havens. After all, Boston seafood, Philly cheese steaks, and a plethora of ethnically eclectic D.C. restaurants were the keys to selling Derek on a nerdy escapade I lovingly nicknamed my “Ultimate Founding Fathers” trip.
Finally, maybe the right to vote is foremost in my mind because studying for the bar exam has me thinking, rethinking and then thinking yet again about our fundamental rights as citizens. One of our best fundamental rights, friends, Romans, countrymen, has to be the right to vote.
Here in our country, we know that we each have one vote. No more, no less.
Taking a quick online spin around the globe, it’s easy to see how many other of the world’s citizens would die – and have died – for the right to vote.
This year, in the small Himalayan country of Bhutan, citizens cast their ballots in the nation’s first election.
And just two years ago in Iraq, citizens lined up to cast their votes in the country’s first free election in half a century, bravely facing threats of violence from insurgents.
Sadly, there are also shams of elections around the world. For instance, in Zimbabwe, citizens had no choice but to vote for the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew a week before the election.
Having a choice in an election is a power many of us take for granted. Heck, it’s a power I exploited to my benefit back in middle school.
When I was at Washington Intermediate School, back before it became Washington Middle School – I still don’t quite understand how the name change is going to ensure our kids perform better on standardized tests – I ran for office.
After mulling over my options, I decided to run for “second vice-president.” It was the highest office a seventh grader could hold in student body government.
Wish I could tell you I selected that particular office because I was the most popular kid in school. While I was indeed a “shoo-in,” it was more because I ran unopposed.
I ran unopposed, because I knew I wanted to get involved, but I also realistically knew that my peers’ votes were based on looks and personality. A gawky girl with a bad perm, braces and pink plastic glasses who was consistently elected “Weirdest” in hoss elections had about as many chances of winning at Washington Intermediate as Ron Paul has in this year’s general.
When I stepped up to the mic to deliver my speech on why I should be elected, I eloquently informed my classmates, “You don’t have a choice.”
Yeah, I blew my chance at experiencing some kind of moment only experienced by the lead in a John Hughes film, but I also spoke the truth.
Two decades later, as American citizens over the age of 18, we do have a choice. We have several choices. We can vote for a Republican, a Democrat, a Green Party candidate, a Libertarian, or for Ron Paul. The United States has voting so down pat, we rock the vote, for crying out loud.
And when I say we’ve got voting down pat, I’m talking about the overall process, Florida’s infamous hanging chads excluded.
Since 1971, which is when the 26th Amendment was passed, as long as you’re an 18-year-old American citizen, you can flaunt your right to vote, surely one of the sexiest individual liberties we have.
No need to get your eyes checked after that last paragraph; you’re right, I said “one of the sexiest.” It’s the most fought for, sought after liberty around. Even Brad Pitt’s not this wanted.
And so, this year, when Election Day rolls around, go on with your bad self and bring sexy back by taking a jaunt up to your local election precinct to cast your vote. If anything, at least the idea that my name or Mr. Mugabe’s is not the lone name on the ballot should cheer you enough to fist pump (or fist bump if you’re with your partner) as you exit that voting booth.
Happy Independence Day!
