I joke with my husband that I was a suffragette in another life. In all seriousness, though, I do not take my voting rights for granted.
I first voted in a presidential election in 1996. Because of a class I was to take, I had to vote absentee. That event set the tone for my whole voting career. Out of the 6 presidential elections I’ve voted, 4 of them have been absentee.
In 2008, our family was traveling on deputation in Alaska. We got off a ferry from Kodiak, Alaska in Homer, Alaska at 5AM. We picked up the absentee ballots that had been sent to us there and found our way to the post office. The ballots had to be signed and notarized. Who better to do so than the local postmaster who was also a notary public? We pounded on the post office door at 6 AM. The postmistress answered with her hair in rollers, wrapped in a big fuzzy robe, feet swathed in huge fluffy slippers. (She lived above the post office.)
“We don’t open for two hours!” she growled. (It was before her morning coffee. Everyone growls before they have their morning coffee.)
We explained our predicament to her. We had a twelve + hour drive ahead of us and the ballots had to be mailed that day in order to arrive in time for the election. She grudgingly let us in to the post office and notarized our ballots after we voted. Bless her for not impeding a free election and doing her duty even when it wasn’t pleasant!
Today, the temperature was a good 80 degrees warmer than it was that day in 2008. The hour was more reasonable, and we only had to go to the Election Office to vote. Apparently, so did several hundred other people at the same time. We arrived to a line that led outside the building, then wove back and forth inside the building.
(The Election Office is under the part of the building that does not have a sign on it.)
We made our way slowly inside, to the front, and then voted.
This election cycle has been a nightmare, as far as I’m concerned. It started too early, and had lasted too long. I’m not even going to go into the choices for candidate. This election, more than any before, has tested my resolve to exercise my right to vote.
Someone once said to me, “A choice to abstain from voting is still exercising my right.”
While I can’t disagree with this statement, I can’t help but thinking that it isn’t what our sisters from history fought so hard for. They already had to abstain from voting. They fought for this right to vote. Some were imprisoned for fighting for this right. It was a long, hard battle, in which women finally gained a voice and an opinion in our electoral process. Susan B. Anthony, recognized by most as the founder of this cause, died before she gained the right to vote in a presidential election.
So today I voted. I’ve voted every presidential election. Often, it hasn’t been because I’ve been particularly enthusiastic about the people I’m voting for. Instead, I join the ranks of those women from the past who believed that women deserved the same natural, civil, political, and judicial rights as men.
Votes for Women!
(For more information about the Women’s Suffrage Movement, check out the Wiki page about it. You’ll get the full history, including the fact that these women fought for the rights of everyone to vote, not just women.)
