Note: This started as a rant on FB then expanded as I worked through why belittlement of voting in the USA pisses me off so much.
To the folks saying that voting is the minimum and we need to expect more all the time from American citizens.
To the folks saying that voting is the minimum and we need to expect more all the time from American citizens.
Your Privilege is Showing!
Some American adults struggle to find time to go vote. They might be juggling multiple jobs. They might have bosses who threaten their jobs if they want to take off time to vote. They may struggle to find transportation to voting polls. They may struggle to find childcare so that they can rush from the polls to work. Sometimes the lines are so long to vote that not everyone can take those hours off to just wait even if they could do it over a lunch break (giving up their lunch that day in the process). Going early? Some folks have long commutes or rely on mass transit that has a set schedule, they might not be able to get their early or right before the polls close.
Some American adults are misinformed about their rights to vote. Some of this is on purpose like giving people the wrong dates, times, and locations. Schools cut education programs about how government works so it is easier and easier to be misinformed. Not understanding how government works or the parts of government on the local, county, state, and federal level, it is easy to overlook the impact it has on their lives.
Some is cultural misinformation like jokes and memes belittling democracies and elections. False comparisons about parties or too loose use of or nitpicking about language used to describe the system of governance makes it all seem like an entity beyond them. It can feel overwhelming or tiring or frustrating to try and sort it all out.
Some American adults are targeted and made afraid to vote. They walk out to their car in the morning to discover flyers "warning" them about police being at the polls. Some of them find graffiti on their property sending silent but clear messages that they are being watched. Some of them have seen neighbors with guns at their sides right outside their polling locations. Those Americans may feel like choosing to vote is risking their lives.
Some American adults have been targeted at the polls. They have had to bring extra paperwork or get a Party advocate to speak up for them. Their neighborhoods have lost polls sites or those sites have been moved into areas where they are made to feel unsafe either on purpose or by the surroundings. It gets tiring fast to feel afraid when you go vote.
Beyond having numerous voting sites, where they are and how they are laid out matters. Just because your eyesight is weak, or you can't hear, or you have difficulty moving doesn't mean you've lost your right to vote but for some American adults it sure makes it a challenge to vote.
Some American adults have been led to believe it doesn't matter. They are constantly bombarded by the idea of the lesser of two evils, or that the corporations run everything, or that democracy is dead, or that it is too gerrymandered to matter where they live. They are told that if they vote this way someone else will vote the opposite so the votes will just cancel anyway. Some of these messages are passed from friend to friend or parent to child, but a lot is shown via mass media. Campaign spend tons of money to spread misinformation about others and to clean up their own messages. Yes, all that information can feel like too much to deal with.
Some American adults get turned off by all the "politics" that they associate with yelling and screaming or greed. They've never heard from nor seen a government official except when it was about taxes.
Some American adults have been raised to think that they must hold out for the "best" or someone who agrees with them 100%. Others are raised to focus on one or two single issues and to ignore any evidence that a candidate might be the worse or best choice on the other dozens of issues out there.
Perhaps as many as 25% of the eligible voting population is NOT even registered (I found different numbers but all were around that national level). We barely get a majority of registered voters out in the Federal presidential elections every four years. Don't get me started on the low turnout for "off-season" elections.
It turns out that for sizable numbers of American adults, voting is not easy, it is not the minimum that they can do because it is a challenge to even do once.
Those of us who can do more like protest, contact our elected officials, run for office, donate money, help out a campaign, or aid a group that does these things... hurray for us!
But if we turn around and belittle the struggle of our sisters and brothers who also have the right to vote but feel like they can't, we also become the ones standing in their way.
So when I'm asking folks to vote, reminding people to vote, I'm also out there helping get people to the polls. I'm out their contacting my government officials about voting rights. I'm out there weighing voting rights in my decisions about who to vote for.
I'm not asking for the minimum activity from the non-voters.
I'm reminding us with enough privilege that we can and do vote regularly to remember to keep encouraging, keep empowering, and keep fighting for the our sister and brother Americans right to vote, too.
